


Of the Devil's Party

by mermaiddrunk



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaiddrunk/pseuds/mermaiddrunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve weeks after the Kayden Fuller incident, Jamie Moriarty is granted a full acquittal, quietly and without fuss. That's when the letters begin to arrive -letters addressed to one Joan Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

 

 

 

 

_Abashed the Devil stood,_  
_And felt how awful goodness is, and saw_  
_Virtue in her shape how lovely._  
_Saw, and pined his loss._  
\- Paradise Lost

 

Twelve weeks after the Kayden Fuller incident, Jamie Moriarty is granted a full acquittal, quietly and without fuss.  
~

Joan is in the kitchen when she gets the call. Her head is buried in the refrigerator, as she loudly bemoans the fact that half of the condiments she had bought the week before have mysteriously disappeared. “If you’re going to use the mayonnaise for your weird little experiments, you need to tell me so I can replace it!” There’s a strange, muffled reply from the living room, which she is about to go investigate when her phone rings.

Gregson doesn’t say much. All he knows is that Moriarty’s out, that the trial was less of a trial and more of, what the Feds call, ‘mediated discussions’. He knows she’s been allowed to leave the country and that the majority of her funds have been unfrozen.

 Joan cannot fathom how any of this is possible, when three months ago the woman was one terrifying face mask shy of the full Hannibal Lector treatment. And now, now she’s free.

 For a moment, Joan closes her eyes and is filled with an odd kind of anticipation and then a resulting sense of panic.

 Briefly, she wonders why Gregson called her instead of Sherlock, but he says, “I thought you should tell him. You’re better with…” he trails off and Joan says, “Yes. Thank you.”

Sherlock is in front of the fireplace, bound to a chair with three different kinds of rope. As her footsteps approach, he squirms slightly and squints against the blindfold, tied tightly around his head. A year ago, this sort of performance would have startled her, now she doesn't blink. Without ceremony, she walks towards him and rips the black duct tape off his mouth.

 “You needn't have done that,” he huffs. “I was seconds away from-”

She lifts the blindfold and says, “She’s out.” He blinks once. Twice. Then stands up quickly, and the ropes which had seemingly bound him fast, fall slackly to the ground.

“How?”

She proceeds to tell him exactly what Gregson told her, but in a softer tone, her eyes carefully assessing his expression, which remains utterly unreadable.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, then mumbles something about the world’s corruption before rubbing his hand over his mouth, where some of the adhesive from the tape remained.

“Right,” he says, with a clear voice and eyes that don’t quite meet hers. He walks past her without another word.

“Where are you going?” Her voice is heavy with concern she doesn’t bother to hide.

“You said we were out of mayonnaise.”

“Sherlock-”

“Don’t wait up.” And then he’s gone and the quiet click of the door signifies an unnerving kind of resolution to the conversation.

But she does wait up, because it’s cold out, and he didn’t take his jacket. Because it’s been seven hours and he hasn’t answered his phone. Because she can't stop thinking about Jamie Moriarty out there, free to resume her empire of murder and mayhem. 

When he comes home at 11pm (without the mayonnaise), he looks impossibly weary. The tea she makes him grows cold. And she finally asks, “Do think she’ll stop?”

The fire splutters and gasps for oxygen and he says, “I don’t know.” And then, “No.”  
~

Seven weeks after, a letter arrives at the brownstone. The return address is to a little known island off the coast of Crete.

Sherlock doesn’t open it. He wants to. Desperately. In fact, he’s already considered at least three ways to open and reseal the envelope without rousing suspicion, but in the end, is swayed by the recently instilled notion of ‘respecting someone else’s privacy.’

When Joan arrives back from her coffee date with Bradd with two d’s, Sherlock hands her the envelope with a blank expression and a letter opener - sharp and silver. “It’s addressed to you.”

She frowns at the handwriting on the paper. She’s seen it before, except never spelling out the specific combination of letters that make up her name.

The envelope is thin, and she holds it between two fingers, half expecting it to explode or disintegrate like something out of a Bond film. But it doesn’t, and Sherlock bounces impatiently on his heels before her, hands clasped behind his back until eventually he says, “Well? Are you going to open it or not?”

 She takes the opener from him and slowly slides it under the thin flap. It tears easily.

In the envelope, folded twice, is a single sheet of paper. Not white. She doesn’t really know what colour to call it. Maybe bone or ivory. But it’s subtly textured and feels heavy and expensive.

In the centre, written in that same rounded, almost girlish script that, according to Joan’s recent reading of “What Does Your Handwriting Say About You?” suggests the writer has great imagination, enjoys freedom and is profoundly detail-oriented, are three lines: 

  _I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;_  
_I lift my lids and all is born again._  
_(I think I made you up inside my head.)_

The words are vaguely familiar, like the refrain from a song she used to know, and it takes her a second to place them. Still, Joan has no idea what to make of it, until Sherlock, whose scruffy head has appeared over her shoulder, makes that “Mmm” noise that usually precedes a lengthy exposition of some sort. Except there is only the raspy sound of nails on skin as he scratches at his chin.

 And she turns her head to him to say, “Mmm, what?”

 “It’s an excerpt from a poem by-”

 “Sylvia Plath.  _A Mad Girl’s Love Song_.” Joan finishes, and he looks at her with surprise. “I dated an English professor in college.” She gives a half shrug. “I guess some of it rubbed off.”

His eyes narrow for a second, searching for the story in between the lines of her scant explanation. “Indeed. Then I assume you know the rest of the poem?”

“Not off by heart,” she confesses. She scowls at the page, as if staring harder will compel more sense from it. “I'm more interested in what it means.”

“Analytically speaking, it touches on themes of longing and regret. A love that is desired, but never quite actualized. Quite raw in emotion. I believe the poet was quite young when she wrote it.”

 She exhales an exasperated breath. “No, not the poem, this, the-” Joan twirls a finger in the air as she searches for the word… “-sentiment behind it. Why send this to me and not you?”

“May I?” He plucks the letter from her hands and holds it up against the light spilling in from the kitchen window. “As far as I can tell, there is nothing irregular about the letter itself. At least not superficially." He brings the paper to his nose and inhales deeply. "Of course we’ll have to read the poem in its entirety to unmask any veiled message, should there be one.” 

“I shut my eyes and the world drops dead,” she softly repeats.

“I suppose it is vaguely sinister,” Sherlock confesses as he squints at the paper.

Joan looks at the envelope again, her eyes keenly drawn to the name above the return address. The loop of the ‘J’, the curved slash of the “M’ and finds herself thinking, even  _her_ handwriting is beautiful, and that particular sense of unease and anticipation twists itself around her spine and clenches.

“Should we… report this?”

 Sherlock hands the letter back. “Unless it proves to be a threat of some sort, I cannot imagine it would be of much interest. Of course we could run it through the lab, but finding her fingerprints would only confirm that she is indeed alive and well, and though I may beg to differ, that is no longer a crime.”

 “But-” Joan is unnerved. It  _should_ be a crime, she thinks. To just- just harass people with words and poetry and, and paintings so beautiful, you see them when you close your eyes at night as if they've been painted behind your eyelids.

It’s at this moment their phones simultaneously buzz with a message from Bell and Sherlock says, “Speaking of crime…”  
~

At 3am, she goes downstairs for a drink of water and Sherlock’s on the floor, pouring over dusty volumes. “The poem's a villanelle,” he announces, not bothering to lookup. “Six stanzas of three lines, except for the first and last, which constitute of four. Not necessarily as sophisticated as say, Elizabeth Bishop, but clever nonetheless.”

“Yes, but what does it  _mean_?” she asks. What does it mean?

He shuts the book in his hand with a definitive thud and says, “I cannot fathom. Perhaps it means nothing at all.”

 It’s a tidy lie, one she wishes she could accept.  
~

 _I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed_  
_And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane._  
 _(I think I made you up inside my head.)_

She knows it all now, even the parts omitted in the letter. Forty-nine hours, a successful arrest and a cancelled movie date with Bradd later and the words still flit around her brain like flies on a fresh corpse.

The letter is exiled to her nightstand drawer and she does not think about it, does not try to analyse or dissect it. And she certainly, definitely does not spend sleepless hours speculating what compelled Moriarty to send it to her.

And they successfully pretend to forget about it.

Until three weeks later, when the next letter arrives.


	2. II

_There is no light_

_only a honey-thick stain_

_that drips from leaf to leaf_

_and limb to limb_

_spoiling the colors_

_of the whole world_

When the words begin to blur, Joan takes off her glasses with a sigh and presses the heels of her palms against her eyes until she sees stars. 

“Ah-huh!” Sherlock’s eyes glitter over the top of the New York Ledger and he fixes her with a satisfied smile.

“What? Have you found a hidden message?”

“No, an advertisement for a partially-restored 19th century gramophone. My pillock of a brother destroyed mine and I’ve been looking for another ever since. It seems there’s a collector in Yonkers who is willing to strike a deal.”

Joan all but gawps at him. “How are you not the least bit concerned by this?” She holds up the new letter and waves it in the air empathically. It had arrived earlier that morning, or rather; Joan had discovered it earlier that morning, on her way for an early run that has now been forgotten. She’s still kitted out in her shorts and baggy t-shirt. Her ipod lies discarded on the couch, where she tossed it before ripping open the envelope.

“You’re doing a fine job of being concerned enough for the both of us.” He puts down the paper and knocks back the last of his coffee. “Have you compared publication dates?”

She repositions her glasses and reads off her notes. “’A Mad Girl’s Love Song’ was published in 1951. William Carlos Williams’ ‘Love Song’ in 1918. There are multiple revisions of the latter. Carlos is also known for his fairly experimental style, which differs significantly from Plath-" 

“Did your literary lover teach you this?” Sherlock taps at his chin and watches her with interest.

Joan blinks and takes a moment before saying, “I did a lot of reading on the subject when we were dating. I mean, they were sort of into the pretentious college art scene, so I spent some time with that crowd. Like I said, some of it must have stuck.”

“And did she woo you with poetry?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I- wait… how did you know it was a woman?”

Sherlock wiggles his finger just in front of her face. “Your diverted eye contact, a heightened change in octaves, the light flush on your face all led me to deduce that this paramour was different from your others, but it was your rather obvious omission of gender pronouns that gave it away. So, tell me, was it your first homoerotic dalliance?” He ignores the roll of her eyes. “I imagine so, since this person was obviously important enough for you to subvert your fairly traditional upbringing. Did you parents know? I would venture not. Your mother doesn’t strike me as a bigot, but she is conservative and I’m guessing you didn’t think it prudent to inform her of a relationship you most likely knew wouldn’t last. I’m curious to know how many women you’ve been with since. Feel free to answer with as much detail as possible.” He ends with a smile and an encouraging look.   

Joan watches this little segue play out with an apathetic expression and finally says, “Are you done now? Can we move on?” 

Sherlock looks slightly miffed that she isn’t more impressed by his deductions. “The fact that you brought her up at all must mean that you wanted me to know. You knew I'd figure it out. Forgive me for being curious."

She sighs, "She taught a few history lectures in my course. We dated for little over 5 months. It was never particularly serious, but yes, she was important, and yes, she was my... first female lover."

Her raises his eyebrows salaciously, "First, but not last?"

“Anyway,” she continues pointedly, turning her attention back to her notes, “Structurally, the poems couldn’t be more different. The only thing that connects them is the title-” 

“And the subject matter.”

Joan inclines her head with a curious look.

“They both deal with _love_ , don’t they?” He scrunches up his face for a moment. “That and a certain sense of longing. It’s all very melancholious.”

She clucks her tongue. “Melancholious is not a word.”

“I’m employing poetic license.”

“So they're thematically similar, I still don't understand the intent behind it.”

“More coffee?”

“Please.”

He stands up and gathers both of their mugs. “I developed a hypothesis shortly after your first letter,” he admits. A dash of milk and one sugar in her coffee and he stirs.  “Shortly after her release, I myself received a letter from Moriarty.”

“Oh.” Joan blinks. She feels oddly betrayed; the strangest thing is she’s not sure if it’s because Sherlock failed to tell her about the letter or the fact that he’d received it at all. Of course, she knows her feelings are irrational. He was the one getting letters in the first place. “When were you going to-”

“I did not respond.” He puts the mug down in front of her, leans back against the countertop, “I was tempted, of course. But I have come to understand that there exists a profound difference between writing letters to an incarcerated felon and corresponding with an active criminal.”

“That must have been a difficult decision.”

“It was,” he pauses here, as if searching for the words, “surprisingly painful.” His arms are crossed as he directs his gaze to the kitchen floor. “But, by continuing our association, I would have, however passively, been endorsing her lifestyle and that is something I cannot, in good conscience abide by.” He shakes his head. “No. It would not do.”

A tentative sort of silence falls between them, until he says, “In the letter, she inquired about you quite extensively. She seems to have become preoccupied with the connection that exists between us. In any case, it is my tentative belief that these letters are an attempt to provoke me.”

“Provoke you?”

“Provoke me out of inertia, now that I have, for all intents and purposes, given her up.” 

Joan wonders if his use of the phrase she had used months before is deliberate. “By engaging you,” he continues, “I postulate that she is attempting to draw me in. She’s well aware of how very valuable your friendship has become to me.”

Despite herself, Joan smiles at this admission.

“And thus, she’s demonstrating that she has the power to take what is mine. She’s stepping on my turf as it were.”

That smile is quickly replaced with a look of disbelief as her eyes narrow to dangerous slits, “Yours? Stepping on your- I can’t believe you just said that.”

“I’m thinking the way she would.”

“Do you have any idea how insulting that is? To be, be objectified?” She shuts her laptop harder than she meant to, and stands. “And to imply that I could somehow be stolen-”

He holds both palms up as if in surrender. “That was not my intention, I assure you. I’m merely attempting to understand her motives, something I’ve learnt to be a largely fruitless activity.”

Joan sighs and seems to deflate a bit.

_What have I to say to you?_

_When we shall meet?_

_Yet— I lie here thinking of you._

The words tap at her brain with ice pick precision, creating windows and pathways she dare not analyze.

“Of course,” Sherlock takes a moment to assess her before he says, “It could simply be a case of Occam’s razor.”

“The simplest option is most often the best one?”

He looks pleasantly surprised that she knows this. “That is correct.”

“In this case, what’s the simplest answer? What am I not getting?”

“Have you considered that there is nothing to get? That these letters are merely that? Letters, words, an expression of feelings.” This last word is said with a twist of the mouth, as if unfamiliar.

“What feelings?

“Feelings,” he pauses dramatically, “that may have developed for you.” 

She makes an incredulous noise, but that panicked sensation is back and she frowns, annoyed at herself for having any sort of reaction at all.

“Moriarty doesn’t have feelings, at least not the human kind.” But even as she says it, the words feel disingenuous. “Besides, even if she did, they’d be reserved for you.” She takes a sip of her coffee, cold now, and wills herself to stop this ridiculous response to Sherlock’s even more ridiculous hypothesis. “You’re the only person on the planet she can really talk to, right?”

She knows it comes across as derisive, but Sherlock counters with, “And yet it’s _you_ she’s sending love letters to.”

Joan looks mildly embarrassed. “I’d hardly call them love letters.”

“Call them what you wish. The fact remains that it is your name on those envelopes, not mine.” If there is a touch of acrimony in his voice, Joan doesn’t comment on it.

“So you’re saying she’s what? Trying to bond with me?”

“I’m saying she’s infatuated with you. Or at least whatever her understanding of infatuation manifests itself as.”

She shakes her head, “That’s absurd.”

“As absurd as a giant portrait which seemed to capture every line and freckle?” Joan's head darts up to look at him and she looks down just as quickly, as if scared of what he might read in her face. “Yes, I was there. I saw it too. You’re constantly encouraging me to emote,” he says it like a dirty word, “Particularly when it comes to her. But we’ve not once discussed that portrait, or what it means.”

“I’ve never really thought about it.” A lie. 

“You said it yourself; she’s drawn to that which she cannot understand. In that way, we are alike.” He gesticulates emphatically, “I would like to believe that I have evolved beyond this. That, through your… tutelage, I have been able to form bonds with others without the persistent need to solve them. Moriarty on the other hand, remains transfixed by the mysterious.” He directs a meaningful look towards her. “You, dear Watson, may be the greatest mystery of all.” 

Her heart begins an unsteady thud against her chest and she can’t account for why. “So what, this is just another game? She's infatuated with me, because she can’t figure me out?”

There’s a strange sort of pity in his expression when he says, “She’s made her move…” he motions to the envelope. “There’s a return address on there. Will you write back?”

Her eyes move over the address - some unheard of province in the Czech Republic. She thinks of Jamie Moriarty, an anomaly of golden hair and fierce blue eyes - a conundrum, Joan has prided herself in unravelling, which now seems as enigmatic as ever.

She looks from the letter to Sherlock, then shakes her head. “No. I’m not interested in playing games.”

“So be it.”


	3. III

It’s almost 3am and she’s tired and hungry and her muscles ache from pushing her body too hard during her run that morning. So, when Sherlock sighs for the umpteenth time in the space of ten minutes, she fixes him with a glare, “You’re breathing very loudly.”

“Am I?” They’re parked two feet away from a streetlamp, so it’s easy to make out the glimmer of schooled innocence in his features. Joan shakes her head and turns her attention back to the empty lot across the street. If their suspicions are correct, Michael Bryant should show up at some point to retrieve a key, hidden by his recently deceased brother – at which point, they can successfully assume that he’s involved in his sister-in-law’s disappearance. The only problem is that they’ve been surveilling the lot for almost four hours and there’s been no sign of activity.

“Maybe he’s already got the key.” Joan suggests after another uneventful twenty minutes go by. “Someone from the warehouse could have taken it for him.”

“Doubtful,” Sherlock says, squinting into the darkness. “According to Detective Bell, Mr. Bryant has made no attempts to get into his brother’s safety deposit box. If he truly had the key-”

“He’d want the box,” Joan finishes with a sigh. “So, I guess we wait.”

She yawns and rolls her shoulders. Stakeouts are far from her favorite thing, but they’re a necessary evil and generally end with an arrest, or a lead, or something. Right now, Joan thinks the only thing she’ll get out of this experience is deep vein thrombosis.

A minute passes. Then another. She can practically hear the complicated mechanisms turning in that brain of his. He finally says, “I noticed you received another letter yesterday.”

She makes a non-committal sound, wondering suddenly if feigning disinterest will encourage him to drop the subject. It doesn’t, of course. “This is the … seventh one?”

“Ninth,” she answers, her gaze firmly fixed on the darkness ahead.  

He hums in reply. “And you’ve not replied I take it?”

“No, I told you. Whatever she’s playing at, I’m not interested.”

A beat.

“Still all poetry?”

“Yes.” It’s not a lie, not completely. “The latest was Neruda.”

He makes a face.

“You’d have preferred she’d stuck with the American modernists?” There’s a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Not at all, it’s just that Neruda is so… appallingly sentimental.”

She smiles a small smile.

 _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair._  
_Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets._

“I happen to like Neruda. I find his work rather lyrical.”

He opens his mouth as if to speak, but doesn’t say anything until Joan finally asks, “What? What’s that face?”

Sherlock is rarely hesitant and seldom tactful, but there’s a tentative quality to his tone when he says, “You’re not… falling for her are you?”

“What? No!” She’s suddenly aware of how high-pitched her voice has become and she shakes her head, annoyed at herself. “No. That’s insane.” And it is. Completely.

He continues despite her protest. “Because I’m well aware of the allure she possesses." And here, his face takes on a wistful expression, as if recalling some memeory that Joan desperately hopes he won't share. He doesn't, and instead says, "But, you must remember that the pull she exerts is not unlike that of a black hole. She will suck you in, but ultimately leave you empty and decimated.”

Joan’s first instinct is to laugh at the absurdity of being "sucked in" by anyone, but then she thinks of Moriarty and her raptor sharp gaze. Cold steel through the heart. And she doesn’t laugh. Instead, a choking sound claws its way out of her throat as she struggles for words. “Sherlock, come on. I’m not  _falling_  for Moriarty. She sends me letters, which I ignore. That hardly makes for a successful… courtship or whatever.”

He watches her closely, intent on hearing whatever she isn’t saying. “For all the murderous psychopathy of it all, I do know what it’s like to be at the center of her orbit, and it can feel tremendously flattering.”

“It’s not flattering, okay? It’s creepy.” But there’s an earnestness in his expression that tugs at something inside of her, and in a softer voice, she asks, “Does it bother you?”

“That Mr. Bryant has yet to show up? Yes, I was fairly certain he would attempt to retrieve the key tonight.”

“No, not Bryant, this… thing with Moriarty. The letters.”

He shrugs, his eyes fixed on the yellow light ahead, which cuts through the darkness, creating shadows and shade. “Why would I be bothered? We’ve ascertained that they are not threats, nor part of some larger conspiracy. So far as they remain benign, I remain… unbothered.”

“It’s just that-” a vague flurry of movement in the distance catches her attention and she reaches for the binoculars around Sherlock’s neck and tugs them to her face, bringing their heads together in an awkward huddle.

“It’s Bryant,” she whispers, lowering the binoculars.

Sherlock smiles. “Excellent.”         

~

She watches his mouth as he speaks. It’s a good mouth – full and malleable. His upper lip is held hostage by an impressive, coppery mustache that tickles her when they kiss. She’s not big on facial hair, but his adds a certain ruggedness to his otherwise boyish face. 

“So I told her I’d take it. I mean, I couldn’t just leave the little guy, could I? I’m thinkin’ of naming him Buster. Whaddya think?”

His heavy New Jersey accent cuts through her thoughts and she blinks the tangle of cobwebs from her mind. “Sorry, what?”

“Buster,” Steve repeats. “For the puppy.”

“What puppy?” She’s confused. Were they talking about puppies?

“The one my sister gave me. Joan,” he smiles at her with a sort of warm indulgence. “Are you okay? You’ve been a bit distant since we got here.”

‘Here’ is lunch at overpriced Italian restaurant had Steve suggested to mark their two month anniversary. Joan hadn’t realized it had been two months since they’d started dating. If she’s completely honest with herself, she wasn’t even that convinced they were dating, until he dropped the word ‘anniversary’. They’d never really spoken about exclusivity, and the only reason Joan hasn’t been with anyone else in the last two months, is that Steve is easy. He’s a paramedic, he understands her crazy schedule. It’s convenient and he’s cute. Cute, and obviously a lot more invested in whatever they’re doing than she is. Still, the place is nice, and the wine is good and it was either this or spend her Saturday afternoon watching a documentary about radioactive decay with Sherlock.

The choice seemed fairly obvious. And yet, as Steve talks about puppies, she finds herself trying to remember the nuclear reaction needed for carbon dating.

What she says is, “I’m sorry. I guess I am a bit distracted.”

“Work,” he nods knowingly and refills her glass. “Don’t apologize. I’m still bent outta shape by that pile up last week.”

“I remember,” she says, her voice softer and tinged with sympathy. “Are you still having those dreams?”

“Nah,” he palms the back of his neck and offers up a self-conscious smile. ‘But like, you see the same shit every day, you know, and then all of a sudden somethin’ stays with you. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t get rid of it.”

“Yeah.” She takes a sip of wine. Then another. “Hey, what are your thoughts on Neruda?” She doesn’t mean to ask it. She wasn’t even thinking about it, until she was.

“Uh, I don’t really like seafood, but I’d try it.”

“What?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “It’s a fish right?”

“No,” she laughs, more at herself than anything else. “He’s a poet.”

“Oh.” Steve looks mildly embarrassed. “He any good?”

She shakes her head and feels strangely guilty for bringing it up at all. “It doesn’t matter.”

He accepts this with a shrug and a smile. “So, you ready to order? Cause a buddy of mine told me about…”

She watches his mouth as he speaks, and thinks about how much she’s going to miss it

~

She’s not quite sure how she ends up on a bench near the park at 4: 22pm on a Saturday afternoon. But here she is, watching a group of youths cackle and fawn each other around the swing set, while a disapproving mother herds her sticky toddlers away from the unsavory elements.    

Her date ended as well as it could have, considering it ended with a break up. It hurt more than she’d expected it to. It isn’t the loss of Steve in particular, but the rupture of yet another attempted connection.

Sometimes, most often, she tells herself that the casual dates are enough, the point isn’t to rush into one meaningful relationship, but to meet people, understand their stories, share hers. Isn’t that what her therapist is always telling her? “There’s a world out there, Joan. Don’t be afraid to live in it.” So she’s been living in it. With Oliver, and Kenji and Bradd and Steve and the guy who she went on one coffee date with and who Sherlock called Mr. Dimples, but whose actual name eludes her.

Tonight she’s sick of the lie. Sick of empty connections and failed flirtations. Mostly though, she’s sick of staring at her phone for a week, with a finger hovering over the call button.

The not-quite lie she’d told Sherlock the week before was that Moriarty had sent only poetry in her letters.

And it was almost true, except for the second page that arrived with the most recent letter. A page which contained a number. Ten digits, preceded by a plus sign and a dialing code that pertained to no particular country. Joan suspects it’s a security thing, but she hasn’t tried very hard to work it out. It doesn’t matter what the number looks like, what matters is who it belongs to.

She wasn’t going to call it. Even when she saved it onto her phone, under the initials J.M, she had no real intention of ever calling it. She just looked at it sometimes, like Alice, staring down the rabbit-hole with no intention of actually jumping in.

And she wasn’t lying when she told Sherlock she wanted no part in Moriarty’s game. Whatever it is.

What she can’t deny is that she’s curious. That there’s this part of her that quivers in constant frustration at the lack of answers. Just one answer really.

_What do the letters really mean?_

She keeps them in her drawer. Plath, Whitman, Auden, Neruda – these voices are the conduit through which Moriarty speaks. They speak of desire and yearning, of loss and loneliness. They tell a story, in which, despite Joan’s best efforts to imagine it otherwise, Jamie Moriarty is the protagonist. Or more likely, the antagonist. Either way, it is a narrative more compelling than Joan wants to admit.

 She stares at her phone and the number displayed thereon. She stares at it until the screen goes black and she has to swipe her thumb across it to bring it back to life. 

The strangest thing is, she’s been thinking about it for so long, that the act of pressing down on that green button is almost instinctive and unconscious. 

It just happens. 


	4. IV

One ring, two, three. Strangely in time to the pounding of her heart – so hard, she feels her ribcage tremble.

It’s a grating combination of nerves and terror. The kind of thing you feel when you’re a kid and you’ve done something bad and you’re waiting for your parents to find out, waiting to hear your name called, waiting to pay for your sins. At the core of it, Joan knows she shouldn’t be doing this, even as the phone rings, as her heart beats, she knows this is the step she shouldn’t take, and yet…

By the fifth monotonous beep, she’s about to put down, with a vague mixture of relief and regret. But then there’s a click, a shuffling noise and then a voice, rough with sleep.

“Hello?”

“Um…” Joan’s suddenly at a loss. Somehow, she’d expected Moriarty to pick up with a quippy one-liner and a sleek laugh. She’d say something like, “I’ve been expecting you, darling,” Or “Well this is a surprise,” with a tone, that suggested the exact opposite.

But it starts with a simple, _hello._

“Hi.”

“Joan.” Not quite statement or question. “You called.” It’s said with a hint of surprise, which in turn, surprises Joan.

“You gave me this number.” It’s almost accusatory.

“Yes, I did.” There’s a rawness to her usually restrained voice, and Joan finds herself unnerved by this disarmed version of the woman on the other end. “I didn’t quite expect you to use it at 4am.”

“It’s not 4am in New York,” Joan says, her brain inevitably trying to pin the time difference to a geographical spot.

“Yes, of course, forgive me,” a low, husky laugh. “It seems I’m still slightly sleep-addled.” More shuffling. And then, in a more recognisable purr, “I can’t deny that I’m a little surprised. But then, you’re good at that.”

“You _gave_ me this number,” Joan repeats, feeling suddenly annoyed. At herself, at the voice on the other end of the line, at the world in general. “You must have expected I’d call.”

“ _Hoped_ would be more accurate a term.”

Joan bites down on her bottom lip, feeling foolish. What was she _doing_? “You know what, this was stupid. I shouldn’t have called.”

“But you did.” And then, “I’m pleased you did.”

Joan opens her mouth, intending fill the slowly expanding silence between her park bench and wherever in the world Moriarty is, but she finds her words have become thick and glutinous. They stick in her throat and she swallows them down.

Finally, she asks the question with which she’s been struggling for so long that it’s made a home inside of her. “Why have you been sending me letters?”

A mediated pause. “What's your theory?"

"If I had one, I wouldn't be asking."

"What does Sherlock think?”

 _Not_ the response Joan was anticipating. As if picking up on her surprise, Moriarty continues, “Surely you’ve shown them to him and the two of you have picked them apart, searching for hidden meanings, clues, motivations.” The last word is pulled out and edged with light mockery and Joan imagines the amused twist of her lips.

 Joan sighs. “He thinks that you’re infatuated with me.”

“Does he?” The delight in her voice is audible. “And what do _you_ think?”

“I think you’re bored.” Joan leans back against the bench. The sun has dipped below the skyline, turning the afternoon orangey-pink. “I think you’re bored and you’re looking for a sparring partner. Now that Sherlock’s ignoring you, you’ve turned your attention to the second best thing. You should know that I have no interest in being your pen pal. I don’t know what I did to encourage this fixation-”

 “Fixation,” Moriarty cuts in, “but not infatuation?”

“I don’t think you could understand the irrationality of infatuation.” It’s too human of an emotion, Joan wants to say, but for some reason she doesn’t. “ _You_ think you’re above all of that.”

“You disagree?”

“I-” Joan pauses before saying, “I don’t think you’re as immune as you think you are.”

Moriarty hums. “As evidenced by my… miscalculation with Sherlock?”

“Yes, and-” She stops, not sure she wants to wade in the murky waters of Moriarty’s motivations.

“You can say her name, Watson.” There’s a blunt edge of annoyance in her voice now. “The secret’s out.”

“What happened with Kayden Fuller…”

“Yes, I showed my hand a bit there, didn’t I?”

“Because you love her.”

“Because she was an innocent.” Moriarty’s reply is quick and unyielding.

“That hasn’t stopped you before. Sebastian Moran’s victims were innocents.”

“Were they?”

The patronising tone to Moriarty’s question has Joan grinding her teeth in anger. “His youngest victim was twelve, not that much older than your _daughter_.” That last word is sharp as a knife point and Moriarty’s voice is cool when she says, “Not all of his assassinations were ordered by me.”

“And yet,” Joan tries to keep her own voice steady. “-you continued to make use of him.”

“When it suited my purposes.”

“Your purposes which left people dead.”

“Is this why you called, Joan?” There’s a hint of petulance in that tone now. “To scold me? To tell me off for my wickedness? If it’s an admission of guilt you’re looking for, darling, I’m afraid it’s far too early in the morning for remorse and redemption.”

“I called to tell you that the letters have to stop.” She’s angry now, she knows it shows in her voice, but the flippancy with which Moriarty speaks, the vague amusement lurking at the corners of her words has Joan rankled. She doesn’t want to engage in this combative tête-à-tête, and yet she finds it comes so easy to her, to them and this dynamic.  

“I thought you would find pleasure in them.” This is perhaps the simplest, most honest statement Moriarty has uttered since saying hello.  

“I-” Joan could, _should_ say that they were more of an annoyance than anything else. That she hated opening envelopes and reading the borrowed words contained within. That she despised having those words follow her for days, seeping into her skin, warming her in places she wished they wouldn’t touch. She should say these things, but even over the vast distance between them, Joan imagines Moriarty would see through the lie.

“They’re fine.” This is the closest she can come to any sort of confession. “But they’re creating a weird tension between me and Sherlock. He says they don’t bother him, but…” The air is cooler now. Joan pulls the collar of her jacket up around her neck. “Maybe that’s your plan,” she continues. “Maybe you want to provoke him to write to you. You miss him.”

“So which is it, then? Am I in love with you or Sherlock?”

The use of the word ‘love’ rattles Joan. No doubt Moriarty used it as glibly as she used the word ‘murder’, but even so.

“You care about him.”

 “He’s is… important to me.”

The simple acknowledgment, has Joan momentarily taken aback. “Well, then let him do what he needs to do. Let him go.”

“But I have.” She says this as if it’s obvious. “Those letters were not addressed to you, not Sherlock.”

Joan’s heart shudders with something unknown. “What do you want from me?”

A pause. “You know, I read quite a bit during my incarceration, far more than I have done in years actually. Fiction, in general, I find problematic. It’s rare to find an author worthy of my time. I have little interest in the invented truths of others. But poetry, much like painting, is a purer art form. And these poems that I would read would so often remind me of you, Joan. I thought you would appreciate them. Perhaps I was wrong.”

“You –” _weren’t_ , she wants to say. But instead says, “can’t insinuate yourself into our lives.” Into _my_ life. “It needs to stop.”

There’s a breath of objection, which Moriarty seems to swallow down before replying with, “Very well, if you truly want me to cease writing, I shall. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for any _weird tension_.”

The disappointment, hits her like a gunshot. Painful and entirely unexpected. “Thank you.”

One beat, two and Joan is suddenly struck by the urge to ask her how she is, how she’s been. Instead, she says, “I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Oh Watson, were I to pit sleep against the sound of your voice, you would win every time.”

That silky charm, so skilfully employed is enough to remind Joan who she’s talking to and it’s enough to dissolve any thoughts of sincerity. “Okay, well. Goodbye, I suppose.”

“I-” Moriarty’s voice pulls her back.

“Yes?”

“I do hope our next conversation will be more pleasant.”

“There won’t be a next conversation.” This lie comes easily.

“Well, then you should know.”

“Know what?”

“That you’re not second best.” No skilful charm now, just naked fact. “Not by a long shot.”

Every possible response feels dangerous. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Joan Watson.” She can practically hear the smile in Moriarty’s voice before the resolute click and the end to this bizarre conversation.

It’s over, Joan thinks as she lowers her phone and drops her head back with a sigh. It’s done.

So why does it feel like she just lost that round?


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic-ish descriptions of violence.

The hood is made from bristly, coarse cloth that grazes against her cheek when it’s pulled from her head. She blinks once, twice, a third time before she realises that the dull, throbbing pain is coming from her left temple. Her head feels noisy and full, like a TV that can only pick up static. It takes a few more blinks for her eyes to adjust to the harsh fluorescent lighting in what looks to be a basement. There’s a greenish tinge to the room, cement walls and no windows. It’s joyless and sinister. She doesn’t want to die in this place, she thinks for a wild moment.

It takes her another moment to realise that she can’t be alone. Someone must have pulled the hood from her head. She moves, but finds herself bound. Wrists behind her back, ankles tied to the legs of a chair so tightly, she can feel them digging into her skin through the denim of her jeans. The cell phone that was in her back pocket is gone. She runs her tongue over chapped lips. For a moment, she’s glad she’s not gagged, until she understands that this is most likely because she’s some place where her screams would go unheard. The thought makes bile rise up her throat and she swallows back the bitter taste of terror.  
  
A movement in the shadows has her squinting. There’s a warm, ticklish sensation against her cheek and she lifts her hand to scratch at it, before remembering they’re bound. The sensation moves down her jaw and into her neck and she realises she must be bleeding.  
  
“I know you’re there,” she calls into the darkness. Her voice is as rough as the bag they had over her head, but it’s steady. Don’t show them your fear, she thinks. They don’t deserve that.  
  
The man who pushes off the wall and walks into the small circle of light around her chair is tall and gaunt. The flickering fluorescence bounces off the hollows of his cheekbones, making him appear almost skeletal.  
  
“Why am I here?” She doesn’t expect a real answer, but the question is automatic.  
  
“Do you know,” he begins in a particular French hybrid accent that suggests his North African heritage. “How much blood the human body can lose before death?”  
  
She doesn’t say anything. Terror wraps itself around her throat and squeezes.  
  
He turns a silvery object over in his hands. “Between three point five and five point six litres.” The glint of the scalpel is familiar. He continues. “Skinning a woman takes only half of that usually. It’s the pain that gets them in the end, not the blood loss.”  
  
“The police know where I am,” she rasps, watching him wiggle long, thin fingers into a black latex glove.  
  
He smiles a wide, bright smile, showing off perfect white teeth. “I highly doubt that.”  
  
“My partner-”  
  
“Is currently meeting with a man named Samuel Merton. Merton is a pawn. He will give you nothing.” The glove snaps at his wrist and she winces.  
  
“Then why?”  
  
“Because you found my diamond.”  
  
She blinks. “ _You’re_ Sylvius?”  
  
“That is one of my names.”  
  
“And…this is about the Koh-i-Noor.” Keep him talking, she thinks desperately. The longer he’s talking the less he’s flaying.  
  
“Which you now you have.” He points the tip of the scalpel at her. “Or, at least your partner does.”  
  
She swallows, willing back the scream that threatens to bubble from her lips. “He doesn’t know.”  
  
She wonders if Sherlock figured had it out yet. She wonders if Merton will tell them anything. She wonders how much time she has left.  
  
“If you kill me-”  
  
“Oh, I do not plan to kill you.” He smiles again. “At least not right away. An envelope full of your skin should sufficiently compel them into action. And well, if that does not work…” He takes two steps towards her. “Do not be afraid to scream.” He runs the cold tip of a scalpel down her cheek. “I like it when they scream.”  
  
I won’t, she thinks. _I won’t_.  
  
But as the sharp edge of the blade presses into her skin, Joan Watson screams.

  
_**36 hours earlier…**_  
  
“It’s making that high-pitched noise again.”  
  
Sherlock licks his fingertip before using it to turn the page of the folder he’s reading. “You’re hearing things.”  
  
“I’m not.” Joan sighs and takes off her glasses, before using them to point at the offending phone, which is emitting an unmistakable whining sound. “It’s clearly about to fall apart. I don’t understand why you won’t just take it in to be repaired.”  
  
“The repairs I’ve done are quite sufficient. Besides, this is your fault.” He continues to flip through pages.  
  
“ _You_ dropped it in a vat of honey!”  
  
He finally looks up at her with a sanctimonious expression. “Had you not snuck up on me-”  
  
“I was walking!” She shoots him a disbelieving glare before shaking her head. “You know what? I’m not doing this with you. Have you heard back from your guy at the auction house?”  
  
He shakes his head. “Should I not receive contact within the next hour, I suggest we pay him a-”  
  
The sound of her own phone cuts him off and Joan picks it up from the coffee table, briefly glancing at the screen. It’s a private number. She answers with a distracted greeting as she watches Sherlock scribble something unintelligible in the margin of one of his notepads. The answering voice causes her heart to drop to her stomach.  
  
“ _I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I/Did, till we loved?/ Were we not weaned till then?/But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?_ Or so it goes in standard English.” Joan doesn’t even realise she’s walking out until she finds herself in the kitchen, as far away from Sherlock as she can get.  
  
“An interesting interpretation, is that the lowercase ‘s’ in ‘sucked’ would have been what is called a long ‘s’ and so, in Donne’s script, would have resembled an ‘f’, which of course, changes ‘sucked’ to ‘fucked’ and the double entendre in seemingly innocuous phrase ‘ _count_ ry pleasures’ hardly needs any explanation.”  
  
Joan pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales a measured breath. She does not need or want this right now. “Stop.”  
  
“Too crass?”  
  
The amusement in Moriarty’s voice is audible and Joan, annoyed, says, “I- don’t… why are you calling me? I thought you agreed-”  
  
“I agreed not to write. A promise I’ve kept.”  
  
Joan cradles the phone against her shoulder as she pours herself a glass of water. “What do you want?”  
  
“To hear your voice.” Moriarty is all innocence.  
  
“Cut the crap, okay? I don’t have time for…” your subtly manipulative, overtly flirtatious, vaguely sexual bantering “- whatever it is you’re doing. So what do you want?”  
  
“Well, I _had_ hoped that my intent was obvious.” There’s commotion in the background of wherever Moriarty is. The faint hum of conversation over music. It sounds like a gathering of sorts. And Joan is suddenly accosted with an image of her out on some balcony, overlooking some skyline, phone to her ear as some glitzy party unravels around her. She wonders what colour dress Moriarty is wearing.  
  
She shuts the refrigerator door and leans back against it, trying to rid her brain of the unwelcome images. “And what is your intent?”  
  
“Well, to woo you of course.”  
  
Joan laughs now, but only because she’s struck by the ridiculousness of this conversation. “Firstly, no-one says ‘woo’ anymore. And secondly, just what do you plan on wooing me into doing?”  
  
“Conversation, a social engagement,” A beat and Moriarty’s voice grows warm, “perhaps something more… intimate.”  
  
Joan swallows before saying, “You’re going to be disappointed.”  
  
“Am I?” She’s smiling. Joan can hear it in her voice. “Well, I’ve already succeeded in one of the three, so you can hardly blame me for trying.”  
  
“Then I should hang up.” Joan knows she shouldn’t be enjoying this. This back and forth that takes her mind off the case and the murders and her awful lunch with her mother the day before. “I wouldn’t want to encourage you any further.”  
  
There’s a sound that might be a chuckle, before Moriarty says “I’m going to be in New York tomorrow evening. I’d like to see you.”  
  
“No.” It’s instinctive and resolute.  
  
“I promise to be more invigorating than any prior engagement.”  
  
“We’re in the middle of a case,” Joan counters. “I don’t have time. And even if I did, I wouldn’t see you.”  
  
It’s Moriarty who sighs now, her voice laced with the thinnest note of frustration as she says, “These arbitrary moral lines you draw are becoming tedious.”  
  
“They’re not arbitrary.” She takes sip of her water. She feels warm. “There’s a difference between reading a letter and consorting with a known criminal.”  
  
“Oh, consorting, is it? Yet you enjoyed my letters, did you not? My attentions? You enjoy the puzzling and the games just as we do.” She doesn’t have to clarify who _we_ are.  
  
“You’re wrong.”  
  
“I hope not.”  
  
Joan takes another sip and put the glass down. “That’s the second time you’ve used the word hope. I didn’t take you for an optimist.” She pauses before saying, “Irene was.”

Joan perversely enjoys using Irene’s name to remind Moriarty of who she is, what she did. Joan will not forget. She can’t allow herself to. “But you’re not her.”  
  
“No,” Moriarty’s voice has become notably cooler. “I’m not.”  
  
“And yet you hope, just like the rest of us mere mortals,” she replies factiously, to which Moriarty makes a sound of disagreement, which may also be disgust.  
  
“There is nothing optimistic about hope, Watson. Hope is instinctive. It is a tragic, yet inescapable part of the human condition. We dream and plan according to an ill-perceived linear timeline, with the misguided conviction that we are immortal somehow, despite all knowledge and evidence to the contrary. There is no guarantee that we will not simply expire. And yet when it happens we are shocked, grieved even. ‘It was too soon,’ we say. And yet there was no promise made. We are not entitled to this life. And so every day, every belief we hold in a vague sort of future is a foolish act of hope. And I feel it, like so many other emotions, despite understanding exactly why I should not.”  
  
Which other emotions? Joan wants to ask.  
  
_You’d be surprised what I’d do for love._  
  
The words come back to her as if from a dream. But Joan doesn’t ask. She’s saved from this by Sherlock’s voice, resonating through the house.  
  
“Watson, I require your immediate attention! The Count Negretto Sylvius is an alias! We need to visit the auction house immediately! Get your coat.” All of this is said to the soundtrack of rustling papers and shoes being thrown on.  
  
“I’ll be right there!” she calls back and is about to start fumbling a goodbye, when Moriarty’s voice cuts through.  
  
“What is your business with Negretto Sylvius?” Her tone is knife sharp.  
  
“It’s a name that keeps appearing in our case. You know him?” Joan’s voice lowers, knowing that she shouldn’t be sharing any case details, but if Moriarty could help…  
  
“Through reputation only. He’s known for-”  
  
“Skinning his victims,” Joan grimaces. “Yes, we know.”  
  
“So you understand that he’s highly volatile. You would do well to stay far away from him.”  
  
“You know we can’t do that.”  
  
Moriarty sighs, “No, I suppose you can’t.”  
  
Joan’s eyes flicker to the stairs, as she listens for Sherlock’s storm of footsteps. “Do you- I mean, what do you know about him?”  
  
“Only that he hails from North Africa, most likely Algeria, spent some time pirating and committing all sorts of atrocities. Not a man to be reasoned with.”  
  
Algeria. She makes a mental note to check that fact.  
  
“For a while, he was rumored to be the alias of one Sam Merton, but Merton’s a dimwit, and most likely a cog in some larger mechanism.”  
  
“Sam Merton?” The name had recently been mentioned by Marcus.  
  
“WATSOOON!”  
  
“I have to go,” she says hastily into the receiver.  
  
“Should you change your mind about tomorrow night-” Moriarty begins.  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“Then be safe, dear Watson.” Her voice is heavy with something. At first, Joan thinks it’s disappointment, but later, much later she wonders if it was in fact concern.  
  
Sherlock appears, with her coat in hand, and Joan disconnects the call without another word.  
“Shall we go?” His eyes flicker between her phone and her face. For a moment, he looks about to say something more, but then merely raises his eyebrows in question.  
  
She nods. “I’m ready.”

~

They’re at the station when Sherlock yells “Eureka!” so loudly that the dozing cop across from them jolts upright and almost falls off his chair. The entire incident would have been vaguely comical, had Joan looked up in time to see it, but she’s so focused on the book in her lap that she hardly acknowledges Sherlock’s bouncing form.  
  
“I don’t get how this could have been replaced with a fake if it wasn’t an inside job.” She looks up when Sherlock hovers over her, his shadow falling over the page she’s been re-reading for the last ten minutes.  
  
“Are you not going to ask me what it is I’ve just discovered?”  
  
She shrugs a shoulder. “You’re going to tell me anyway.”  
  
And so he does, and Joan’s fatigue gives way to excitement as the new break in the case makes it possible for them to request a warrant for Merton’s offices.  
  
“Do you still have the coin from Suresh Vijay’s collection?” Sherlock asks, squinting at his phone, which seems to have gone blank.  
  
“Yeah, it’s back at the brownstone.”  
  
He nods. “We shall need it.”  
  
“Alright, you go with Bell. I’ll meet you at Merton’s offices in an hour.”  
  
He looks at her quizzically. “You don’t want to come along?”  
  
“I do, but I also really want to take a shower.” She stands up, and makes a show of sniffing in his general direction. “You should take one too. I think you’re beginning to mould.”  
  
He takes an offended step back. “I maintain a perfectly acceptable hygiene routine.” He waves his hand at her dismissively. “Go then. I shall see you within the hour.”  
  
She’s reaching for her coat, when he says, “Watson?” She raises her eyebrows expectantly.  
  
“You’re going directly to the brownstone? No,” he scrunches up his face as he grapples with his next words, “clandestine meetings along the way?”  
  
For a second, her heart lurches, but she says, “Who would I be meeting?”  
  
Sherlock holds her gaze and nods once. “Indeed.”  
  
She hadn’t lied when she told Sherlock she was going directly home, but she also couldn’t deny that the knowledge of Moriarty here, in her city, disturbed her thoughts. She didn’t feel great about keeping it from Sherlock either. But he had his beehive of secrets, she’d tell herself, at times when she felt too guilty, too tempted. And she is tempted, in some terrible, crazy way that induced butterflies and self-loathing. She’d never act on it. Not for his sake or her own. But she is tempted.

These are the thoughts she’s distracted by as she jogs up the steps of their home, making the job of the man waiting for her in the shadows of the evening light, that much easier.  
  
~  
  
She’s in the trunk of a moving car. This much is obvious. Joan blinks against the darkness, but nothing can be seen. She’s blind and bound. At least partially. She tries to remember everything she’s learnt about getting out of moving cars. Things about kicking in lights and finding hidden wires. But her hands are behind her back and all she feels is the soft carpet of the trunk. That and the bulge in her back pocket. Her phone. They didn’t take her phone. Most likely, they didn’t expect her to wake up until they reached whatever location they were taking her to. Desperately, she wills herself to stay calm, but her heart’s thudding so loudly in her ears, it’s difficult to think. There’s another kind of thudding, coming from her temple. She tries to ignore it as her fingers twist and turn, making frantic attempts to reach the phone. After what feels like an hour, the tip of her middle finger scratches against the corner of her phone and she turns it enough for her thumb and index finger to get a tenuous hold of it and pull.  
  
Joan blindly turns the phone over in one hand, careful not to let it drop. If it drops, she might never find it again. And so, she turns it over, fumbling and swiping her finger over the screen. She’s suddenly thinking about every movement that usually comes automatically. After a few minutes of this, she hears the little beep that tells her it’s unlocked. Finally. Joan pushes her thumb down on what she hopes is her speed dial. She imagines even a few muffled words will alert Sherlock to her predicament. In the muted dark of the trunk, she can hear the ring, ring, ring. It goes on forever and her heart sinks. Her head is searing now and keeping her eyes open is proving difficult. It’s a bad concussion, she can feel it. The car stops and Joan feels sick. They’ll take the phone away if they find it. Her last chance, her only chance. With a cramping finger, she pushes down on another button, one which will hopefully take her back to her call log. It was private number, she thinks miserably.  
But maybe this one was different. Maybe…  
  
_One ring, two, three_ –  
  
“Joan! You’ve changed your-”  
  
“I’m in the trunk of a car,” she breathes, terrified that they’ll hear her. Terrified that at any second, they’ll open the lid. “Abducted. The Count. We’ve been driving for about an hour. I need you-” to find Sherlock, she was going to say, or maybe it was, I need you to contact the police. But there’s a slam of the car door, and heavy footsteps and she hastily shoves the phone back in her pocket, not sure whether she had disconnected the call or not.  
  
Joan closes her eyes, hoping they’ll think her still unconscious and somewhere between being picked up and carried out into the night, the world becomes a little dimmer and she stops pretending.  
  
~

She screams as the blade slices into her cheek. Not so much because of the pain, because the scalpel is sharp and it stings only briefly.

No, she screams because she realises what he’s about to do. The images of those three flayed women burn into her memory and she is sick with horror.

The cold steel tip moves down just a little and Joan feels her skin split open. She takes a breath. Screaming has made her tired.

“You must be proud,” she rasps out, sucking air into burning lungs. The blade stops for a moment.

“Why do you say that?”

“Stealing something so coveted, so protected. It couldn’t have been easy.”

“It was not done for the glory.” He pulls back a fraction. “No, not glory.”

“Then why?” Her cheek is throbbing now. “Why go through all of that?”

“Is it not obvious? I wanted to take away the thing most precious to them. To rob them of their vanity.”

Keep him talking, she thinks. His profile fits that of a narcissistic psychopath. He’ll want to brag. He’ll want to talk about his victories. Let him, she thinks.

“That’s why you skin them. To rob them of their vanity?”

He takes another step back and eyes her with something that may be appreciation. “The skin is nothing more than a shell. A veil to hide true selves. And yet,” he taps the bloody edge of the scalpel against his knuckles, “And yet we’ve made it a defining human quality. All of this,” he gestures towards her face and she flinches. “All of this is a mask.” He reaches out and trails a gloved finger down the bridge of her nose. “Though yours, might I be so bold as to say, is a particularly beautiful one.”

He smiles softly and leans in as she tries desperately to think of something to ask him, some way to distract him, but his eyes are set and cold and she pushes herself back into the chair, as if she could dissolve into it if she tried hard enough.

He’s still smiling when the first gunshot rings through the building. And when the next shot cracks through the air a second later, Negretto Sylvius turns around sharply, to find the source of the noise.

The scalpel is still in his hand when his chest explodes and a bullet rips through him. There’s another shot, then another, even though he’s on the ground, now a bloody mess of barely squirming flesh.

Joan stops counting at six shots.

She feels oddly calm as she watches Sylvius’ body finally stop twitching. Three figures move in the distance. Two make their way to the back of the room, their shadows are broad and tall.

One stays. A slim silhouette that walks towards her with quick, purposeful strides and Joan looks up, her vision blurry from tears and the harsh lighting. She looks like an angel, Joan thinks, that tangle of blonde hair, radiant against the too-bright florescent glow.

An angel with a gun.

“There are,” Joan struggles to will her mouth into words, “There are others,” she finally rasps, thinking of the man who carried her from the car. “He’s not alone.”

“It’s taken care of,” Jamie Moriarty whispers against Joan’s temple, her lips barely brushing skin as she bends down, past Joan to undo the bindings. The ropes fall away and Joan flexes her bruised wrists.

“I thought…” she releases a choked sob and shakes her head. She can’t remember what she thought. A sudden weightlessness fills her body and she feels moments away from floating off into the ether.

Moriarty kneels down next to her chair, seemingly unaffected by the blood staining her knees.

“It’s all right now,” she murmurs gently, unknotting the bindings around Joan’s ankles before looking up, meeting Joan’s half-delirious gaze with clear, unwavering eyes. “You’re going to be all right. I _promise_.”

These are the last words Joan hears before eyelids flicker shut and she lets the darkness in.

~

The first thing she’s aware of is that the bed she’s on is significantly less comfortable than her own.

The next, is how thirsty she is. Joan opens her eyes gingerly, and shuts them for a moment before opening them again. The room is pale grey with morning sunlight.

She’s in a hospital. She knows this, because of the drab colour palate and the beeping of the heart monitor and the uncomfortable chair Sherlock appears to be sleeping in. His head lolls over the arm of the chair, his own arm is flung haphazardly over as well. She can’t imagine a more uncomfortable position.

On the table next to her are half a dozen floral arrangements and a small teddy bear proclaiming that he hopes she feels better _beary_ soon. It makes her smile, which she immediately regrets as her cheek lifts and pulls on the three butterfly bandages they've placed over her cut. She traces her fingers over them and hopes it won’t be an obvious scar.

Joan pushes a button that elevates her bed and allows a slightly more comfortable look at the room. There’s a jug of water next to her too, and a glass and as she reaches for it, she sees the vase. A long, elegant vase holding a single flower. Perfectly white petals, but for the pale green-tinged tips, so long they resemble wings. Almost hidden between the colourful splash of the other bouquets, which seem garish in comparison. It’s an orchid, she’s sure, but she’s never seen anything quite so spectacular. There’s little doubt who it’s from and Joan feels a peculiar fluttering inside of her.

The memory of golden hair and the glint of a silver blade taps at the edges of her mind and the fluttering turns into a heavy thump. It’s okay, she tells herself as a shiver runs through her body. It’s alright.

_It's all right now._

The echo of that voice fills the space around her as she reaches out to run her fingers over the silky petals of the flower. They’re soft and slightly furry.

“ _Dendrophylax lindenii_ ,” Joan jumps at the sound of Sherlock’s voice. He approaches her swiftly and pours water from the jug. “Do you have need of a straw?” His voice is raspy from sleep.

She shakes her head and takes the glass with a grateful smile, before remembering her cut.

Sherlock’s eyes move from her to the flower. “The Ghost Orchid it is also named. It is incredibly rare, and no doubt illegally obtained. But so very beautiful.” He touches a petal with the barest tip of his finger, as if it would sting him should he get too close.

“H-” Joan clears her throat and tries again. “How long have I been out for?”

“A little over twenty eight hours.” He stands over her, hands clasped behind his back as he watches her drink.

She turns over her wrist, displaying the purplish bracelet bruise. “That would explain why these are already blue.”

He makes a murmured sound of assent before turning his attentions back to the menagerie of colour on the bedside table.

And so Joan looks at him, _really_ looks at him, for the first time since she opened her eyes. The shadow of his beard is darker, his eyes bloodshot and his clothes unchanged.

“I’m guessing you never got around to that shower,” she says, attempting humour.

“There were more pressing matters.” He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t even look at her until she hands over her empty glass.

She winces as she attempts to sit up – her wrists, her calves, her back, all tender with a dull but perceptible ache.

He steps towards her, as if trying to help, but pulls back when she pushes herself up on her own, grimacing the entire time. “Do you require anything for the pain?”

“No,” she falls back against the hospital pillows with a grunt. “No, I’m okay.”

Sherlock eyes her warily, but doesn’t argue. Instead, he moves back to slump into the chair he had previously occupied. She watches him watch the wall, and alarm bells go off in her head.

“Sherlock-”

“You’ll be happy to know the diamond is currently on its way back to its rightful owners.” He cuts her off efficiently.

Joan swallows. “And...” she doesn’t want to say his name, but she must. She won’t let this become bigger than it needs to be. She won’t allow herself to hold on to the fear. “And Sylvius?”

Sherlock’s jaw twitches, and still, he does not look at her. “His body was not found. Trace amounts of blood at the scene served as the only evidence that he was there at all.”

She frowns. “You said ‘his body’. How did you know he was dead?”

“She would not have permitted him to live.” And now he does turn to Joan, his face strained but ultimately unreadable. “Not after what he did to you.”

Joan’s heart beats hard and erratically against her ribcage. She doesn't ask how he had deduced that Moriarty was behind her rescue. She can imagine a million ways in which he found out. “You’re upset.”

“I’m furious,” he admits. “But not at you. Nor her.” His gaze rakes over the cut on her cheek, the bruises on her wrists, and suddenly Joan can put a name on the emotion lurking behind his eyes.

_Guilt._

“Sherlock, you couldn’t have known.”

“I could have been there sooner. I could have saved you from the trauma, the pain. And yet, I didn’t. Why? Because my bloody phone failed to notify me of your call.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and retrieves the phone in question. “Such a small, innocuous object.” He holds it up as if to inspect it. “I promised I would let no harm come to you and yet…” Without another word, he hurls it across the room, causing it to fly apart and shatter. Joan flinches at the sound.

“Stop!” Her voice causes him to look at her sharply. “Just stop.”

He runs a hand over his tired face and the urge to reach out and comfort him in some way is overwhelming. But she’s never been overtly tactile, and neither is he and there’s the issue of the hospital bed between them. Still… “You can’t deal in hypotheticals.”

“Had I listened to you about repairing the damn thing-”

“Yes, you might have found me sooner. You might not have. You’re not responsible for the actions of a maniac.” Joan sighs. “You know that better than anyone. And I don’t blame you.”

“You should,” he says softly, staring at the broken shards of glass now covering the floor.

“I don’t.”

“I’m your partner,” he looks at her with a vulnerability she so rarely glimpses. “If you cannot trust me to… protect you, to… have your back as it were-”

“But I do,” she says, holding his gaze until he blinks away the anguish. “Maybe more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.” She doesn’t know it until she says it. “And in our line of work, dangerous things happen. Bad things happen. You can’t always be there to protect me. Just like I can’t always be there to protect you. But we do our best.” She shrugs, almost helplessly. “That’s all we can do.”

He nods solemnly, his eyes still burning with displaced intensity. “I’ll do better,” he murmurs and Joan says, “We both will.” Because she was distracted, because she should have been more vigilant, because she hates the thought of Sherlock blaming himself.

They say nothing for a while, and Joan closes her eyes, thinking she might drift off again when he says, “How long have you been in telephonic communication with her?” It is a tentative sort of inquiry, absent of any accusation.

“Not long,” her eyes flutter back open. “Maybe two weeks.”

“Have you seen her?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to?”

“No.”

He looks over at her. “Should I be concerned?”

She wants to say no. She wants to say it firmly and with resolve and put any doubts to rest. But more than anything, she wants to be honest, with herself as much as Sherlock, and so she says, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Right.” He seems at a loss, which makes her feel strange and unhinged. “Right,” he says again. Softer this time, as if he’s just made sense of something. “Once you’re up to it, we shall resume your single stick training with full aplomb. I shall need to acquire a new dummy however. The last one has still not recovered from the tragic acid incident.”

The non-sequitur is jarring, but necessary and she nods. “Okay.”

He puts his hands on his knees and pushes off the chair then turns to her. “I’m relieved that you’re well, Watson. I cannot begin to tell you how worried… Bell and Captain Gregson were.”

She smiles, despite the pulling bandages. “Will you thank them for all the beautiful flowers?”

He looks like he’d rather not. “They will, no doubt be paying you a visit. I’m sure you could-”

“Yeah, okay.” She cuts him off with an eye roll. “You’re relieved of your duty.” She waves him out. “Go get some rest. The next time you’re in here, it better be in a different shirt.”

He nods and says almost sheepishly, “That would be best.”

He leaves with a parting glance, heavy with meaning that Joan would rather not decipher at this point.

~  
  
The hospital phone is hidden somewhere under a large yellow bouquet, and she has to dial out before it makes any sort of familiar noise.

Joan dials the number from memory. Heaven knows she’s stared at it long enough to have it burned into her subconscious.

Moriarty picks up after one ring. “You’re awake.”

Joan leans back against the pillows. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for days.”

“Just one.”

“I-” Joan’s eyes flicker to the flower. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You needn’t say a thing.” Moriarty’s voice is soft and oddly timid.

“But I do.” Joan moves the phone from the left had to her right. “When you showed up, I wasn’t sure-” she finds herself suddenly trembling and she exhales, willing herself to be still. It’s over, she thinks. It’s over. “How did you find me?”

“Your phone,” Moriarty replies. “They turned it off, but the dolts failed to disassemble it. Tracking your location was fairly simple. I only wish-” she pauses long enough for Joan to say, “What?”

“I only wish I had arrived sooner.”

“You saved my life.”

“It’s a life worth saving.” It’s said with such simple conviction, that Joan feels her eyes well up. It’s the residual trauma she tells herself, feeling ridiculous as she wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“Well, thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome, Joan Watson.”

“And thank you for… the flower. It’s beautiful.”

“As are you.” Joan’s struck by the lack of… the lack of subterfuge in Moriarty’s usually suggestive tone. It’s unnerving. This subtle change in their usually combative dynamic. But, Joan finds she doesn’t want to banter, or reply with witty quips. How can she, when all she feels is gratitude, gratitude and a host of bourgeoning emotions she can’t begin to name.

“I have one question though.” Moriarty takes Joan’s silence as a sign to continue. “Why did you call _me_?”

Joan anticipates the rest of the question. “I did call Sherlock,” she replies, wondering why she feels the sudden urge to lie. “I called him first, but his phone wasn’t working and so-”

“And so you dialled your last contact. Of course.” There’s a light chuckle on the other end that may or may not be accompanied by a self-deprecating smirk. Other than that, Moriarty’s voice betrays nothing and Joan wishes, for a moment that she could see the face on the other end of the conversation.

There’s a moment when neither of them speaks. Joan opens her mouth twice to say something she should not. “They’re going to question me,” she finally murmurs. “And when they do-”

“You will need to mention my involvement. Yes, I have anticipated this. And you may be as honest as you wish, but they will not find Sylvius’ body, nor any evidence of my being at the warehouse.”

“I wouldn’t want to … complicate things for you.” It’s an absurd thing to say, considering Joan’s ties to the police force. Considering that Moriarty is who she is. And yet, despite everything,  Joan is nothing if not courteous and she feels, somehow, like she should apologise, even if she’s not quite sure what she’s apologising for.

There’s something of sigh on the other end and Moriarty says, “Oh Joan, you still don’t understand, do you? No, you wouldn’t.” She continues as though the question was rhetorical. “How could you when even I…” she trails off and Joan waits, pressing her phone tightly against her hear, as if wanting to absorb every hidden breath and whisper. “You’re safe, and that’s all that matters, no?”

“Yes.” Except it isn’t.

Voices in the hallway catch her attention and she says, “I should probably go. I just wanted to thank you. For showing up when you did.”

“Hopefully next time, we shall meet under less dire circumstances.” Moriarty says this pointedly, giving Joan ample opportunity to refute the assumption of there being a ‘next time.’

“I can’t promise anything” 

“Nor would I expect you to." She hears the curved smile in that voice. "We wouldn’t want things to get boring, now would we?”

“No,” Joan agrees, feeling a jolt of pain in her cheek. “No, we wouldn’t.”

And so, it is Moriarty who disconnects the call, leaving Joan alone once more, in the cold morning light.

 


	6. VI

Joan was back in the warehouse. She hadn’t _meant_ to be there. She was supposed to be at the hospital. Her patient had died in the night. She needed to speak with his family. Yet she found herself in the middle of it, right where it all happened. It wasn’t a basement like she had thought at the time, but the second floor of an abandoned textile factory. The windows had been painted black and boarded up. The only light in the place was coming through the cracks of paint. Bright moonlight had snuck its way in, creating slashes of white light on the floor. Above her, the stars dotted a blue-black sky, in swirls and studded constellations. The roof had blown off sometime after she arrived.

She didn’t think it would come back soon.

The night was cold and she shivered. The air smelled of paint and gunpowder.

Two shots rang out. They cut through the silence like a whip, like a knife, like a smile.

She could run, but where to? All the doors led to the same place and she didn’t want to go to that place. Not yet.

Two more shots.

 _Bang. Bang_.

With each shot, the sky seemed to grow lighter, until it was a frothy-pink canvas and Joan could barely see the stars at all.

_Bang. Bang._

She turned around to find Sherlock, hunched over a sea of papers. Behind him, was a wall of post-its, sketches, maps and clippings. It was warm in the study, with the fire crackling, filling the air with a subtle pine scent. He handed her a mug of tea. It was peppermint. Her favourite. She reached out to take it from him, but found herself holding an orchid instead. The stem was thin and fragile between her fingers.

She looked to Sherlock with surprise and admitted, “In my weaker moments, I suppose I’ve entertained the notion that she might… change.”

The smile he gave her was the mask of tragedy. “That’s my line, Watson, or did you forget?”

_Bang bang._

Joan squinted against the bright light. The room was sunlit, and filled with splashes of colour from the many canvases stacked up on easels. It took a second to realise she was in the house where they had found Irene. In the room, where Sherlock had broken down and Joan had first glimpsed that fractured woman, pale and fragile as her flower. 

Then there she was. She seemed to have come from nowhere. Her angel hair glimmered in the morning light, like it did that night, when she rescued Joan from the darkness.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Jamie Moriarty said in a voice that was both faraway and familiar.

And Joan took a step back. “Your hands.”

Moriarty looked down, as if noticing her them for first time. Fingertips to wrists - stained bright red.

“I’ve been painting,” Moriarty held the offending integers up for Joan’s inspection. They smelled of paint and gunpowder.

“And now they’re dead.” Joan shivered again, but her body felt warm as Moriarty stepped closer.

Joan did not step back.

The kiss was hard and hungry. Joan devoured Moriarty’s mouth – and left it wet and twisted. A kind of mutilated rose.

Moriarty’s breath was hot against her cheek. Against the thin, silvery scar.

_“You’d be surprised what I’d do for love.”_

Joan wakes up with a scream in her throat.

She doesn’t move for a few seconds, as fragments of the dream flee and other parts settle and embed themselves, like shrapnel, in her consciousness. The taste of that mouth, the smell of paint. Joan exhales a trembling breath and throws an arm over her eyes. Her forehead is dotted with sweat and her thin t-shirt clings to her body, damp with perspiration. It takes her a few more seconds to realise that her body is buzzing with a different kind of awareness that makes her feel like she’s betrayed herself somehow.

As if on cue, her phone begins to buzz and she squints into the sunlight coming through her flimsy makeshift curtain before blindly reaching out for it.

“Hello?” Her voice is hoarse with the remnants of sleep.

“I’ve woken you.”  For a moment, she’s disoriented, wondering if she’s confused the voice in her heard and the one on the phone, but then Moriarty says, “If you like I can call back at a more convenient time?” She sounds contrite and Joan fights the urge to throw the phone against the wall.

Instead, she reaches back and adjusts the pillow behind her, allowing her to sit up more comfortably.

“There is no convenient time.” She snaps and reaches for her watch. It’s barely 5:30.

 “You’re upset.”

 _That could be because I’ve been woken up at five-thirty on a Sunday morning,_ is what she should say, but instead, the truth slithers treacherously from her mouth. “I had a dream… a nightmare,” she answers, then rubs a hand over her face, feeling the cobwebs slowly dissolve from inside her head.  

“Why are you calling?”

“Do I require a specific reason?”

“For waking me up at an ungodly hour, yes.”

“I thought I’d see how you were.”

Joan scoffs.

And Moriarty says, “That amuses you. Is it so very difficult to believe I might care about your wellbeing?” There’s a hint of strain in her voice.

“Caring involves an element of selflessness.” Joan squints as she watches a purplish-blue mound move out from under her bed. She’s about to yell out in alarm, before she realises it’s Clyde, in his Cookie Monster cosy who, for some reason has been living under her bed for the past two days. He trudges awkwardly across the floor and Joan smiles until the voice on the other end brings her back.

“You don’t think I could be selfless?”

She watches as Clyde disappears behind the radiator. “No.”

“Saving you from that warehouse was rather selfless,” Moriarty counters. “I gained nothing from it.”

 _Didn’t you?_ Joan thinks as her heart begins a heavy thump. Unconsciously, her fingers run over the three little bandages on her cheek. The doctors had said the scar would be barely noticeable and eventually fade.

Somewhere, in the background, a shrill bird cry rings out, which prompts Joan to ask, “Where are you?”

There’s a pause of consideration before, “The Solomon Islands.”

“How’s the weather?” Joan doesn’t know if she’s asking because she actually cares, or because she’s curious as to how much truth she can extricate from Moriarty before today’s game is over.

“Windy, humid, impossible amounts of sand everywhere. I hate it,” she confesses and Joan laughs,

“You don’t like tropical paradise?”

“I much prefer milder climates. I find myself longing for a reprieve from this cloying heat.”

“Try spending a summer in New York.”

“Is that an invitation?” Moriarty’s voice is like syrup.

“Hardly.”

“To be fair,” Moriarty continues completely ignoring the slight, “there are places in the world where the heat is almost forgivable. Have you ever been to Morocco, Joan?”

Joan remembers her 6-month stint in Sierra Leone back in 2003, just after the civil war, and the two weeks she had spent travelling up West Africa with a band of doctors. She recalls all of this but only says, “I have. It’s beautiful.”

Moriarty hums in agreement. “Something we have in common then.”

 “We have nothing in common.” Joan bristles, suddenly aware of how relaxed she’d become, how vulnerable, as if for a moment, she forgot who it was she was talking to. It became too easy, too _friendly_.

“We have _one_ thing in common.” Moriarty counters and when Joan doesn’t reply, she goes on to say, “I imagine he did not take your incident very well.”

Joan lets her head fall back against the pillows and stares at the ceiling. There’s a thin crack, right above her head, that she’s never noticed before.  “Why don’t you call him and ask.”

“Oh, there’s no need for that.”

“Because you think you know what he’d say?”

“Because conversing with Sherlock like talking into a rusty tin can and hearing my own voice come back at me,” there’s a beat before, “-and I am tired of my own voice.”

Joan wonders what exactly she means, but some reason; she’s annoyed at Moriarty’s mention of Sherlock. Joan feels defensive. She feels protective of him. It’s a strange acknowledgement, but true nonetheless.

“You’re not as alike as you think.”

“Oh?” Joan imagines the arched eyebrow, the rounded mouth. “How are we different? Enlighten me.”

“Well, he’s not a psychotic murderer for a start.”

“But he could be.”

Joan opens her mouth to protest, but Moriarty continues, “Not psychotic. The term is so reductive in any case. No, he leans toward narcissism, I suppose we both do, but he’s far too aware for psychosis.”

“So you’re saying you have the same brand of crazy? Okay, but he’s not going around orchestrating murder.”

“Do you think he hasn’t thought about it?” Moriarty asks in a low voice. “How easy it would be? I know what he did with Sebastian.  How he planned not only murder but torture, pain. There’s a darkness in him, Watson, even you must acknowledge that.”

Joan swallows. She feels unhinged, like Moriarty has somehow extended invisible hands and pulled the rug out from under her. “Moran was the exception. He was driven by grief.” She listens to the faint breathing on the other end. “By love.”

“Ah, there it is.” Moriarty makes a sound of amusement, though Joan guesses she feels anything but. “Sherlock is and always will be volatile because he allows himself to be ruled by his emotions.”

“And you don’t?” The scepticism in Joan’s voice is clear. When Moriarty doesn’t answer Joan says, “So, hacking at Devon Gaspar’s throat after he took Kayden Fuller, when you could have killed him swiftly, visiting Sherlock’s hospital room at the risk of being caught… you don’t think you were swayed by emotion?”

This is an echo of their first phone conversation, she realises, wondering why they keep circling this drain, wondering why now, Moriarty’s replies seem to carry so much more weight.

“Suppose your theory is true. Suppose I am as vulnerable to _feelings_ ” she enunciates the last word with an edge of mockery, “as Sherlock, well, then you’ve proved my point, have you not? He and I are the same.”

“Except for one thing.”

“Which is?”

“Sherlock fights for the good guys. You don’t.”

She laughs now, a rich, lusty laugh that tugs at something inside of Joan. “He’s the superhero and I’m the villain, is that it?”

Joan says nothing and Moriarty continues. “If anyone’s the hero, it’s you, Dr Watson. And perhaps,” she pauses as if thinking about it, “perhaps all I need is the right person to pull me from my villainy and show me the error of my ways.” It’s said with teasing sarcasm, but the insinuation is clear, and it makes Joan uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to be charged with Sherlock’s ascent from misanthropy to… well, she’d hardly call him a philanthropist, but…

“He’s changing because he _wants_ to.”

“People don’t change, Watson. Things can be learnt and unlearnt, I admit, but rarely, _rarely_ do we encounter a catalyst strong enough to alter our proclivities and behavioural patterns indefinitely.”

_In my weaker moments, I suppose I’ve entertained the notion that she might… change._

“You believe the impetus for change needs to come from an external factor?” It’s a notion Joan wants to reject entirely. Everything she’s learnt in her training and experience has taught her that people cannot change for someone else.

“As human beings, we crave validation, rewards for a job well done. For some, that validation comes from a deity, for others, it’s in the form of a parent, or a lover. For Sherlock, it’s you. Surely you recognise that?”

She does. Part of her has always known it. But it’s a responsibility she doesn’t want.

“What about you?” Joan finds herself asking. “What’s your catalyst?”

“I can’t give away all my secrets, now can I?” She responds silkily and Joan wants to say, _you haven’t given any away._

But Moriarty cuts through her thoughts. “Tell me about your dream.”

And this is the last thing Joan wants to do.

“I don’t remember it.”

“Was I in it?” Moriarty’s tone has turned playful and Joan can practically see her smiling expression.

“I don’t remember it.”

There’s a sigh of disappointment, which may also just be resignation and she says, “Well, anyway, I envy you.”

“You envy me?”

“I don’t dream,” Moriarty elaborates, “-at least not in any narrative sense. It’s all abstract colours and textures. Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms.”

“Macbeth?” Joan guesses, loosely recognising Moriarty’s turn of phrase.

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“Ah.”

“When I was a little girl, we had a Kandinsky painting in one of the hallways. I remember lying on the rug and staring at it for hours, transfixed by the bleeding colours and skewed lines. I sometimes wonder if a part of me got lost in that painting and a part of it in me.”

Joan is silent for a second, as Moriarty’s words swirl around inside of her, simultaneously stitching together and pulling the fragments of the women on the other end. And Joan asks, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, she asks, “Where were you born?”

Half a heartbeat and Moriarty says, “A small town near Calais.”

“France?”

“Hmm.”

“The FBI file says Reading, England.”

“What else does that file say about me?” Her tone is suggests she’s amused by this.

Joan looks to her side and debates getting up to find the copy she’d had made and subsequently stored in a box in her closet.

“You’re thirty-three.”

“Thirty-two,” Moriarty corrects swiftly.

“Birthday in November, so you’re a… Scorpio?”

“June, Gemini.”

She closes her eyes and tries to remember the facts as if they were innocuous, as if she’s read them off a dating website profile, as if they didn’t matter.

“No prior arrests or _known_ history of lawlessness.”

“True enough.”

“You have a net worth of over two billion dollars.”

Moriarty’s laughter is laced with indignation as she says, “Is that all? I don’t know whether to be offended or grateful for their sheer ineptitude.”

 “These _facts_ were fed to them by you,” Joan reminds her, and Moriarty sighs, seemingly annoyed that her lies were so easily bought.

“Well, if they’d done an iota of homework…”

“How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“You don’t, I suppose. But you enjoy trying to figure it out nonetheless.”

_“Who are you?”_

Joan doesn’t mean to say it out loud, she doesn’t mean to say it at all, but she does, and the question hangs between them, heavy with meaning.

For a moment, as the silence extends and ripens, she wonders it Moriarty has hung up. But then finally, finally she says, “I’d like to be your friend, Joan.”

Joan swallows. “That’s impossible, for so many reasons.”

“Name one.”

“I don’t particularly like you.”

“And liking someone is a prerequisite for friendship?”

Joan doesn’t want to smile, but she does. “You don’t have much experience with this friend thing, do you?”

“I suppose not.”

“I wonder why,” she answers drolly and Moriarty says,

“How about it then?”

“I don’t want to be your friend.”

“What _do_ you want?”

Joan rejects a thousand truths lingering on the tip of her tongue and says the only thing she can,

“To sleep in, but that’s clearly not happening…”

______

He lingers outside of her door.

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. In fact, the cooling mug of peppermint tea in his hand clearly suggests that he was about to do a good deed and bring her a morning beverage, before coercing her out of bed to help him move the giant wooden chest in the attic.

At the sound of her voice, he had hesitated. He’d recently taken it upon himself to study the varying tones and cadences in her voice depending on whomever she was speaking to. The way it fluctuated and changed according to whoever was on the receiving end of her exchange fascinated him.

His initial assumption, based on the familiarity of her tone, was that she was conversing with one of her female brethren. This theory was soon invalidated by the edge of belligerence in her voice. Her brother, perhaps? 

  _“Somehow I doubt that-”_ Light laughter.

She’s _flirting_ , he thinks, listening to the way her voice drops, the pull of her words. He’s surprised. He wasn’t aware of any paramour since she discarded the last one, at least no one close enough to inspire this level of amour.

He presses an ear to the door, the tea in his hand growing cold. He’s not eavesdropping. He’s doing research. The human voice is a marvellously singular thing, and Watson’s proves no exception. 

_“We’ve been through this. I’m not changing my mind. I don’t care how many times you’re in New York.”_

Realisation hits him in the chest and his stomach drops. It is an oddly physical thing. Sherlock jerks away from the door with force, spilling tea all over socks in the process. He’s halfway down before he turns to go back up. But he doesn’t. Instead he stands, in the middle of the staircase; with a half empty mug and a heavy feeling settling in the pit of his stomach.

 _This cannot end well_ , he thinks, as the water on his socks turns cold and chills his toes.

                                                                                   


	7. VII

“You know, Alyssa’s getting married to that grave digger.”

Joan sighs as her mother sips her tea and with that specific expression of distaste that she’s cultivated and perfected over the years. “He’s a funeral director, Mom.”

Mary Watson shakes her head. “Angela is devastated.”

“Why? Alyssa’s a grown woman, she can make her own decisions.” Joan brings her own cup to her lips and grimaces. Oolong. She hates Oolong.

“Every mother wants the best for their child.”

“It’s not up to Aunt Angela to decide what the best is.” Her phone vibrates against the glass table and her eyes dart to the screen. Low battery. Joan shrugs off a twinge of disappointment.

“Your aunt has every right to be concerned. As do I.”

Joan puts down her cup and looks confused. “About Alyssa and Gary?”

“No, Joan.” Mary reaches out and puts a hand over Joan’s. Mary Watson is not a particularly demonstrative woman, a trait Joan has inherited, and this public show of emotion is unsettling at best. “I'm concerned about _you_.”

“Why?”

Her mother’s hand leaves hers and Mary runs a finger down the thin, diagonal scar, which interrupts the splatter of freckles over Joan’s right cheek. It’s turning silver, and hardly noticeable, except to Mary, who commented on it immediately.

Joan turns her head out of her mother’s reach. “It’s nothing, I told you.”

“Does “nothing” happen often with this job of yours?”

She sighs again. “I thought you were happy that I found something I'm passionate about?”

“I am.” Mary sits back, her eyes searching Joan’s. “I am. I just worry about the dangerous situations you put yourself in.”

“It’s just a scrape.”

“Today it’s just a scrape-”

“Mom-” She feels the beginning of a tension headache tap at her left temple. 

“They should let you carry a gun at least.”

“I can’t carry a gun, I’m not a police officer. Besides, I don’t want to carry a gun.” Another vibration. A message from her service provider.

Mary’s eyes narrow as she watches Joan put the phone down and push it away. “You seem very distracted, Joan. Are you expecting a message?”

“No,” she offers her mother a tight smile and sips on tea she didn’t order. “I’m… it’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?” asks Mary, who speaks passive aggressive like a second language. “I don’t want to keep you from your business with Sherlock.”

“It’s not business.” Joan responds automatically and then wishes for a hole in which to bury her head. There’s no way her mother didn’t catch that moment.

“So you’re seeing someone?” Her mother phrases it like a question, but it’s really not and they both know it.

“Nothing serious.” It’s better than a flat denial, and it’s not a lie. The last guy she went out with was Steve and that ended spectacularly. And yet somehow, she doesn’t _feel_ unattached.

It's at this moment, that the call arrives and she reaches for her phone hastily. _Sherlock_. “Sorry,” she mouths and brings the phone to her ear. 

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Murder, mayhem, general human depravity.” He sounds chipper.

“So, a typical Tuesday.”

“Indeed. How fast can you get to the station?”

“Twenty minutes if I get a cab.”

“Do that then.”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

She disconnects and offers her mother an apologetic glance.

“I know I said I was free today, but-”

“You need to go.”

“Work stuff. I’m sorry.” She doesn’t feel particularly sorry.

Mary signals the waiter and shakes her head at Joan, who offers to put down money for the tea.

“I suppose I should count my blessings. At least you’re not marrying a grave digger.”

 _No_ , Joan thinks as she leans down to kiss her mother’s cheek. _What I’m doing is much worse._

_______

She’s just given the cab driver the address, when her phone vibrates in her bag. Sherlock’s most likely calling to tell her the state of decomposition.

“Hello?”

_“There was a young lady of Niger_  
 _who smiled as she rode on a tiger;_  
 _They returned from the ride_  
 _with the lady inside,_  
 _and a smile on the face of the tiger.”_

She doesn’t want to smile, just like she doesn’t want to feel this flush of warmth and excitement. But it seems her body doesn’t really care what she wants at this point and all Joan can hope for is that she doesn’t sound as giddy as she suddenly feels. “You're opening with a limerick? Seriously?”

“Well it was either that or Kubla Khan. The only two poems I know by heart.”

“I guess I should thank you for your brevity then. I know how much you love the sound of your own voice.”

“I’d much rather hear yours, to be honest.”

She looks out of the window as the cab comes to a halt. Outside is an orchestra of honking horns, and construction. A driver yells, and somewhere tires screech. Late afternoon traffic in New York City. And Joan says, “Where are you?”

“Faraway.” It’s a wistful answer, but Joan doesn’t expect much.

“But you’re okay?”

“Concerned?”

“Curious.” She’s getting better at lying. “You haven’t harassed me for almost a month.” Twenty-six days.

“I’ve been… tying up loose ends. Rebuilding an empire is harder than one might imagine.”

“My heart breaks for you.” But she wonders how much rebuilding Moriarty is doing, how much damage her incarceration has caused. Part of Joan hopes it all came crashing down, like a house of cards on a windy day. It’s a bizarre feeling, caring about someone while simultaneously wishing for their downfall. And she does care. It’s far too late to deny it, especially to herself.  

“I’m sure.” Moriarty replies dryly, but with a definite hint of amusement. “Let’s not talk business. That’s not why I called.”

“Why did you call?”

“I missed the sound of you berating me. I find myself thinking of you in the strangest moments, Joan Watson. I feel quite mad at times to be honest.” She chuckles here, as if to punctuate the statement with a lightness that belies its meaning.

“I’m flattered.” Joan’s reply is wry, but she means it.

“You should be. I’ve been told I’m very eligible.”

“My mother will be happy to hear it.”

“How is your mother?” It’s a genuine enough question.

“Fine. Exhausting. Worried about me.”

“I believe it is the nature of mothers to worry.”

And Joan asks, “What’s yours like?”

A laboured pause. “I couldn’t say. She died when I was very young.”

“I'm sorry.” It’s an instinctive response, but not lacking in sincerity.

“Don’t be. It was not you who compelled her to jump from our third storey balcony.” It's said as flippantly as if she were describing the weather.

And Joan says, “My god. That’s awful,” before carefully filing away this piece of information into the folder in her head marked _Impetuses and Motivations_.

“Well, my father thought so.”

“So you were raised by your father?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Where is-”

“Why does your mother worry? Surely she can see that you’ve made a success of your life.” And just like that it’s over, she’s done sharing, and Joan knows by now when to push and when to let it go.

“I think it’s my personal life that’s a constant disappointment to her. She keeps waiting for me to “settle down”. Thank god Oren’s doing enough settling for the both of us.”

“You envy him?”

“Oren? No. Yes, sometimes. I mean, sometimes I wish-”

“What?”

“For a little more…a little more normalcy, I guess.” They’ve come to a traffic light and Joan watches the mass of New Yorkers bustle across the street. Her tribe as it were.

On the other side of the world, Moriarty sounds nonplussed. “Why on earth would you wish for that? To be conventional when you’re so exceptional.”

It’s a throwaway comment, not meant as a compliment, but it warms Joan nonetheless.

“I don’t want my brother’s life. I just…” She sighs as she tries to articulate her thoughts, “The stuff I’m doing with Sherlock it’s… for the first time in a long time I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time. I like my life. But, it can be lonely.” She’s never said it out loud before. The admission is almost scary.

Moriarty hums in acknowledgement as she considers Joan’s words. “Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you.”

“Sartre?”

“Rilke.”

Joan’s lips quirk as she retorts with, “Okay, well…You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

“Anais Nin?”

“Winnie-the-Pooh.”

Moriarty laughs that full, deep laugh that has become impossibly dear to Joan. “Touché. And yet you cannot truly believe in the idealised notion that there exists a single romantic connection we must wait upon? You’re far too intelligent for that.”

“I don’t. But I also don’t deny the importance of human connection.”

“You think this _connection_ makes us better?”

“Better? I don’t know. Happier, yes.” They’re moving again, at a snail’s pace.

“Happiness is a transitory state born of chemical reactions. Yet you spend your lives chasing it like an addict after a high.”

 _You_ , she says, as if she is not part of this human condition.

Joan blinks. She’s heard this kind of rationalisation a dozen times from her housemate. It’s uncanny really. But it’s also different. With Sherlock, it’s a swapping of ideas, an entertaining sparring of ideology, a back and forth that doesn’t ever need to go anywhere. With Moriarty, it’s… intense. An absorption and expulsion of feelings and understanding, constantly building towards something. What, Joan can't quite say.

And so she asks, “What do you value above happiness?”

“Wealth.” Moriarty’s answer is quick, as if it’s obvious and Joan frowns with surprise.

“Money? Okay. That’s fairly prosaic. It also proves my point.”

“Which is?”

“That deep down, everyone wants to be happy. People want money because they think it’ll make them happy. It’s a means to an end.”

Moriarty makes a sound of objection. “No, you’re wrong. There are two kinds of people in this world, Watson. The first, the common kind, believes that money is a currency, by which to acquire stuff, things. The second, understands that money is a tool by which to enslave the first kind of person.”

Joan opens her mouth to interrupt, horrified at this logic, but Moriarty continues. “The more people you have under you, the higher you are on the pyramid, the higher you are, the more accessible the world becomes. It is only once one reaches the zenith, the highest point, that one can truly understand the meaning of power.”

“Which is?”

“To live outside of human constrictions, of arbitrary laws and moral limitations. Can you imagine looking up and seeing only sky?”

There’s an intensity to Moriarty’s voice, a pleading quality, as if begging Joan to understand, to _see_. And Joan is surprised to find that she is filled with a profound sense of sadness.

“I’d rather be happy than powerful.”

“Happiness is fleeting.”

“Power is lonely. Up there on your pyramid, just you and the sky.”

“I’m not lonely.” She sounds annoyed, and Joan thinks she’s struck a nerve.

“Yet here we are. That _is_ why you call me, isn’t it?”

“I call,” Moriarty sounds suddenly weary, “because you continue to fascinate me and I enjoy your… insights. I don’t have many people with whom I can so freely converse. The better question is, why do you answer?”

They’ve stopped again and Joan looks at her watch. She’s late. Surprised Sherlock hasn’t attempted to bother her about her whereabouts. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.”

“I think you like me.” It’s said with such self-assurance that Joan shakes her head, despite there being no-one around to see it.

“I don’t,” she says, but without real conviction.

And Moriarty continues, “I think despite every instinct, you like me and that scares you.”

“I’m not scared of you.” It’s almost petulant. Like a little kid talking to the playground bully.

“Not of me, no, but of the burgeoning… intimacy between us.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Prove it. Have dinner with me next week.”

Joan laughs at the sheer obviousness of the tactic. “You’re not goading me into a date.”

“I never said _date_.” She imagines the coy smile on Moriarty’s face. “I enjoy our conversations. I feel they’d be more enjoyable in person.”

“So, how would this work? I’d get a call from my brother to tell me about some emergency, on my way out, I’d get accosted by an overgrown minion of yours, manhandled into a car? I’ve got to tell you, as fun as that was the first time, I’m not really into mystery locations these days.”

“I wouldn’t-” her voice actually falters, “I’m sorry for that. But that was before-”

“Before what?”

“Would you have gone with me to that restaurant if I had simply asked nicely?”

“No.”

“Then you understand why I had to go to such lengths.”

“And now?” The cab stops outside the precinct and Joan cradles her phone against her shoulder as she digs a hand into her purse.

“Now… things have changed. And I’m asking nicely. Have dinner with me.”

“I can’t.” A slam of the door and the cab rides off.

“You won’t make beg, will you, Joan?” Joan stands on the steps outside. Something about being so near to the station while speaking to Moriarty feels wrong.

“Or perhaps that’s what you want?” Moriarty continues. “Do you imagine me on my knees at your feet? Handcuffed perhaps?”

She scoffs. “I’ve seen you in handcuffs.”

“Not the way I’m imagining it.”

She leans back against the brick wall. “The size of your ego is astounding.”

“Surely you’ve thought about it." Moriarty's voice lowers, suffused with warmth. "On those lonely nights, in your big, spartan bed, biting down a scream, your hand between your legs.” Two cops walk out and nod and Joan smiles at them awkwardly. “Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“I’ve thought about it,” she says quickly, mostly just to shut Moriarty up. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“Only if it’s the truth.” Moriarty sounds almost disappointed at Joan’s easy admission.

Joan sighs, “You demand truth, but offer so little of it.”

“Ask me anything and the truth is yours.”

Joan pinches the bridge of her nose. The headache is back. She should stop now. She should say goodbye and go inside. She should stop. But she can’t. Just one more question, just one more revelation, just one more word from her lips. It’s a strange and terrible kind of addiction.

“What are you hoping to get out of these exchanges?” She finally asks, and Moriarty’s answer is simple and without frills.

“Illumination.” And before Joan can respond, she says, “Now I have a question for you, Joan."

"All right."

"Why do you continue our correspondence?”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You demand truth, yet offer up so little of it,” Moriarty turns Joan’s words on her.

Her exhalation is heavy with defeat. “You said earlier that I fascinate you. Well, you fascinate me too.” Her heartbeat is a deafening roar inside her head and she wishes for painkillers. Something to dull the scream.  

“Perhaps there is something to be said for connection after all.”

A beat. Maybe two, and a single syllable pushes itself from Joan’s lips. “When?”

“When what, darling?”

“When are you going to be in New York?”

_____________

It’s almost an hour after talking to Sherlock that she walks into the station. Marcus raises his hand in a wave as she comes in and scans the floor.

“He’s with the M.E,” he starts, anticipating her question. “I’ve never seen him so excited before.”

“Excited?” Joan looks puzzled. “Why?”

Marcus sighs and taps the folder in his hands against his open palm. “At this stage, and I stress, it’s still a very tentative analysis, but the M.E’s calling it spontaneous combustion.”

Joan looks at him in bewilderment. “You’re kidding?”

Marcus shakes his head. “Wish I was. Never seen anything like it.”

“And Sherlock’s with him right now?”

“He looked like a kid in a candy store.”

“I can imagine,” Joan nods, because she really can.

“Joan, do you have a minute?” Captain Gregson stands in the doorway of his office.

“Of course.”

“I’ll wait,” Marcus says, as he tosses the file back on his desk and sits down.

Gregson’s office is warmer than the rest of the floor and she shrugs out of her blazer. “What’s up?”

There are a number of black and white photographs spread out over his desk. The majority of them displaying a pretty young woman in her early twenties. “Are you familiar with the Khumalo case?”

It would be difficult to forget the story that dominated practically every news network less than three weeks prior. “Thando Khumalo, grand-daughter of a Kenyan diplomat, studying at Columbia.” Joan remembers reading an article. “She was murdered in her dorm, right? They said it was a burglary gone wrong.”

Gregson nods. “Right.”

 Joan frowns and taps at the mug shot on the desk. “Didn’t they catch the guy?”

“They did and he confessed. Jordan Twist. No priors, no numbers, it’s as if the guy never existed before the murder.”

“What changed?”

“I got a call from a buddy of mine in Organized this morning. Apparently Twist was found dead in the showers, with a bar of soap stuffed down his throat.”

Joan grimaces.

“They think someone found out he’s been talking to the Feds. Last Monday he offered up a list of names. Claimed the burglary was staged and Khumalo was the target all along. One of the names he gave us led to an apartment of a pretty high ranking councilman who was dangling from his ceiling fan. They’re calling it suicide, but… after scouring his place, they found an encoded phone.”

Joan looks from the table to Gregson, wondering where he was leading her with this rabbit hole tale. “I’m still not sure what this has to do with me?”

Gregson sighs. “Look, you two have never been sharper than you are now. I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize Holmes' focus.”

She shuffles on her feet, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is taking. “I don’t understand. What would jeopardize his focus?”

Gregson pushes a slip of paper towards her and says, “This was one of the names deciphered from the phone.”

She squints at the paper. “Should this mean something?”

“Look closer.”

 _Ms Mary Riot._ It sounds like a 70’s punk group, Joan thinks.

MARY RIOT

MARYRIOT

 _MORIARTY_.

 


	8. (an interlude)

Three rings and the buzzing of bees. He tells himself he’s on the roof because it gets the best reception. He tells himself it’s got the best acoustics. He tells himself  it's not because he's hiding.

Four rings and an answer. A voice, both familiar and unfamiliar. Warmth he remembers from before, when it had another name, another face.

“I was just thinking about you,” says the voice that could once have belonged to Mata Hari. All silk and subtle seduction. For the briefest of moments, he allows himself to believe that it is indeed directed at him. A perverse indulgence, he knows.

“How serendipitous,” he replies, shattering any and all illusions. “I was just thinking about you.”

Her surprise is unmistakable. “Sherlock?”

“Moriarty.” He pronounces each syllable with venomous distaste.

“You’ve taken something that does not belong to you.”

It had been far too easy pocketing Watson's phone as she settled down to read. “Temporary liberated.”

“I see.” Her voice is measured. He had expected no less. “And to what do I owe the pleasure? I had thought since you so abruptly ended our correspondence all those months ago that you must have forgotten about me.”

“Would that I could.”

“Well,” she sounds genuinely wounded. “That’s not very nice.”

“We don’t do _nice_. I thought that’s been established.” He scrunches up his face and shakes his head, as if to clear it, as if to shake her off. Talking to her produces a queer sort of pain, somewhere at the base of his skull. It’s distracting in the worst kind of way.

“Yes, you’re right.” It's said wistfully, before she asks, “So if not to be nice, why _did_ you call?”

“To tell you that this… farce, this game of yours has to stop.” He says it with as much restraint as he can manage.

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” Her guileless tone has him clenching his teeth. Because she knows, she must know.

“Watson.” He states simply and clearly. “Watson.” Saying it out loud makes him feel strange. Even here, on the roof, with nothing but the bees to hear his case. “Whatever you’re doing with Watson, it must stop.”

On the other end of the conversation, Moriarty makes a sound that may be born of amusement or perhaps indignation. “I hardly think that’s for you to dictate. What may or may not be happening between Joan and me is between Joan and me.”

“That’s bollocks and you know it.” He takes a breath to steady himself. It will do no good if he let the anger, simmering at the edges of his consciousness, overtake rational thought. This is not about his emotions. He needs to remember that. “You must have known that I would become aware of this attachment. You must have factored in my reactions. And you knew, at some point, there would be a confrontation.”

“Does the sheer enormity of your ego ever weigh you down? I imagine it must get awfully tiresome.”

“Do you deny pursuing a relationship with my partner in order to engage my attentions?”

 “If that was my plan, and I’m not saying it is, well then it’s worked out splendidly, hasn’t it? Listen to yourself, Sherlock. You’ve devolved into a paranoid fool. Such a plethora of emotion. How uncharacteristic.” She sounds amused. “Have you considered that perhaps I speak to Joan because I enjoy speaking to Joan? Simple as that.”

He had considered it. Of course he had. But there is nothing innocuous about her actions. There never has been. She is the harbinger of doom. She seeks to corrupt. That is all she is capable of. This is what he tells himself. This is how he lies to himself. And he says, “Whatever your motives, though I suspect them foul, this must end.”

“Because you’ve stomped your foot and thrown your toys?”

“Because you’re breaking her!” He doesn’t mean to raise his voice and for a second he imagines the city stops and turns its gigantic ears in his direction. “You’re breaking her,” he says again, this time with restraint.

“She doesn’t _sound_ broken to me.” Moriarty’s voice is quiet, steady.

“Then you’re not listening. Everything she is, is the antithesis of you. She is… moral to a fault, altruistic. _Good.”_ He hates subscribing to these binary ethical terms. As far as he is concerned, there is no black and white, no good and evil. And yet it seems that the juxtaposition of Watson against Moriarty, is stark in contrast.

“And this _goodness_ ,” he continues, “It is not a weakness as I would have initially estimated. No, it makes her stronger. Smarter. But you, you are poison. You have her empathise with you, deconstruct you, _care_ for you and your moral nihilism will destroy that which she holds dearest.”

“And what is that?”

“Her humanity.”

“How much power you give me.” She says it mockingly but there are strains of annoyance in her tone. As if perhaps, just perhaps, she has been shaken. 

 “She doesn’t go on her little dates anymore.”  

“And you think this has to do with me?”

“No doubt you’re providing her with the intellectual stimulation those bores were lacking, but you cannot offer her any more. It isn’t fair.”

“To whom?”

A mere second of hesitation and it is all she needs. She knows the meaning between his words, she’s always been able to read his silence.

“You love her.” It’s an accusation, swollen with pity and he feels a strange kind of shame. Not for his feelings, but for his inability to hide them from her. He has never been able to hide anything from her.

“I do,” he confesses. “Not amorously. But there is… a _connection_. One I have not felt with anyone else.”

“Not even Irene?”

The throbbing at the base of his skull intensifies and he closes his eyes for a second as Bach’s Chaconne plays in his head. “Irene,” he says at last, “was a figment of your twisted imaginings.”

“But you didn’t know that at the time.” She says this in an American accent. Irene’s accent, and for the briefest of moments he remembers the smell of her hair – turpentine, honeysuckle, shampoo, summer. It makes him want to gag.

“It was harder than you’d imagine,” she says, her accent slipping back into its natural state. “Letting go of Irene. Of you.” Part him knows she’s playing up to his ego and still, he finds himself pulled in, searching desperately for a truth between her lies.

“It’s different with Watson.” Behind him, the sun dips beneath the New York skyline, painting the sky a vivid orange. He likes to come up here at sunset. He likes the visual representation of the transitioning states. Day to night.

He is blind to all of it now as he continues, “With her, I am my best self. Better than even you.” As he says it, the pieces suddenly fit and the brazen sunset comes alive before him. “But then, you knew that, didn’t you? And that, _that_ is why you seek to fracture our relationship. You intended to win her affections, to sway her to your cause, thus making me weak.” And he feels almost gleeful now, as her strips her off truths without her consent.

“I suppose we could pretend for a moment that you’re correct. That this was my original intent.” Her voice drips with condescension.

“What puzzles me, however, is this.” He raises a finger to the heavens, “You have, for all intents and purposes, failed. You have not managed to draw her to the dark side, you have not fractured our relationship in any significant sense. Watson remains my loyal companion. Why then, do you persist in continuing this farce? Why not give up? Unless…”

She sighs in response. “You’re so resolved to hearing deception behind my every breath that you’re deaf to the truth.”

And the truth, it seems, is bitter and sharp. “Am I to believe that you have genuine feelings for her?”

“Is it so impossible, Sherlock?" There's a disarming sort of sincerity in her tone that bothers him. "To believe that I may be as moved by Joan as you have been? Are we not mirror opposites, you and I? Identical and inverted reflections of the other. And if you, a cynical misanthrope could be… changed by such a woman, is it not possible that I too, could be affected?”

He blinks and blinks again. Is it possible? Is this not something he, in the deepest recesses of his mind, desired for so long? But he says, “It’s absurd. The… intimacy between Watson and myself is born out of shared experiences. Of familiarity. Not a few adolescent love letters and phone calls.”

“And yet,” her voice is soft and gentle, as if schooling a child, “I appreciate her in ways you do not.”

“Piffle.” Dusk has given way to a cold, clear evening, characteristically nippy for November. The bees have quietened and instead the night air is filled with the buzz of human activity down below.

“To you, Joan is a fascinating mind, to be tutored and moulded. She is a student.”

“She is my partner.”

“But not your equal?”

He scuffs the toe of his shoe against the cement ground. She gets too close, too deep, she always has. “There are… few who are. But you’re wrong if you think I view her only as a student. She has taught me a great many things. I value her as a person.”

“And as a woman?”

“Her sex is a non-issue.”

“And here is where you and I differ.” Her voice lowers as she says, “I find myself quite fascinated by her… sex.”

He makes a sound of disgust. “Objectification.”

“Appreciation.”

“And despite this, you would corrupt her.”

“I would… learn from her.”

“To what end? Surely you cannot imagine anything meaningful could come from this.”

“I-”

 A mere second of hesitation and it is all he needs. He knows the meaning between her words, he’s always been able to read her silence.

“You’re ensnared.” It’s an accusation, swollen with pity.

A soft confession. “Yes.” Laced with a sort of childlike shame.

Sherlock runs a hand over his chin. Two days’ worth of growth, rough against his palm.

An bizarre kind of ache – peculiar and unfamiliar. He does not want to name it jealousy, and yet, and yet…

The rational part of his brain chastises this train of thought, but cannot snuff it out completely.

And yet it is the underused part of his brain, the part that pulses with unwanted _feelings_ that leads him to say, “Then, I implore you, if you ever felt anything true for me, if any of it was real, I implore you to stop this. Stop this.”

“I can't.” She answers, in a voice heavy with regret he believes to be genuine. “It must be her decision.”

“And should she decide to end it, you will honour that? No… coercion, no retribution?”

“You’re asking if I would resort to violence should Joan decide to… _break up with me_ as it were.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Do you truly believe I am capable of harming either one of you?”

“You are capable of a great many things. I have learnt not to underestimate you.”

“You have my word,” she says solemnly. “I would not, could not see any harm come to either one of you.”

It’s a hollow promise at best, but he nods silently and for a few moments, neither of them say anything. In the silence there is understanding, there is something strangely akin to amity.

Even so, he feels compelled to add, “I will never trust you with her, you must understand this. I will never sanction it.”

“And you must understand, that despite what you may feel for me, or for Watson, this has naught to do with you. Not anymore.”

“You’re asking me to do the impossible. I cannot stand back and watch-”

“Then close your eyes,” she says. “Because unless your plan to forbid Joan from corresponding with me, there is nothing you can do.” It’s not said with spite or malice. She’s merely stating a fact and he feels powerless even as he says,

“Sooner or later, she will remember who you are, who she is, and it will be over.”

“And so you have nothing to worry about. All’s well that ends well, right?” It’s a phrase she’s used before and Sherlock is suddenly filled with a profound kind of pathos.

All the sadness of the world. 

“And yet this will not end well.”

“No,” Moriarty agrees, in a voice that echoes his own. “I don’t suppose it will.”  


	9. IX

It’s almost 2am when she eventually falls into bed. She’s spent hours reading articles, case files, confidential reports, all pertaining to the Khumalo case. She and Sherlock aren’t assigned to it. Strictly, it’s not even Gregson’s jurisdiction. He had made it clear that he was sharing the information with her solely because he wanted her to alert Sherlock to the possibility of Moriarty resuming her ‘activities’ in New York. It shouldn’t come as a “nasty surprise”, he had said. Joan had agreed. She isn’t a fan of nasty surprises herself.

That was two days ago. Two days of wheedling files out of the precinct under the guise of research. She’s astounded at how much leeway they give her and Sherlock because everyone assumes the captain’s sanctioned it. So no-one blinks an eye when Joan asks for the password to an encrypted file, or case notes that only a few eyes have seen. No-one stops her when she leaves office with a folder of copied files marked “classified”. She feels terrible, but she does it all the same.

When Sherlock asks what she’s so fascinated by, she tells him. Tells him about the case, about the murders, about the recent developments. She tells him about everything except the name that has cropped up. She tells him everything except the one thing she’s expected to. She tells herself she wants to figure it out first. That there’s no point in presenting him with a meaningless anagram if she can’t tell him how and why Moriarty is connected. And Joan’s confident she can figure it out. She’s sure of it. Except it’s been two days and she’s got nothing. Most of the details of the subsequent murders, of the councilman’s alleged suicide are with the FBI and Joan knows that no amount of wheedling will get her into their files, not without drawing substantial attention to herself. She considers contacting Captain Gregson’s friend, the one who offered the information. An Agent Danver. But the idea is dismissed as quickly as it’s sprung up. She’s on her own.

Joan’s self-aware enough to recognise the root of this obsession. She’s self-aware enough to recognise that it’s a problem. Because she’s not looking for clues that tie Moriarty to the case, she’s looking for clues that exempt her. The brutal assassination of a young woman, a girl really - Joan wants to believe Moriarty’s not responsible, that she’s not involved. She  _needs_  to believe it. But belief is not enough. She has to find proof, evidence. She has to look the horror in the face and find no trace of the woman she’s begun to care for, despite every instinct screaming at her to run from this.

So it’s been two days and she finds nothing, and still, she thinks, it’s better than finding the wrong thing. What she keeps coming back to is the anagram.  _Mary Riot_. It seems out of character, reckless even, that Moriarty would allow her name, even a coded version of it to be publically recorded. Joan can’t imagine that she would allow herself to be so vulnerable.

And so, she sifts through files, reading about the Kenyan diplomat, about the deals he was making, about how his granddaughter’s death put his business on hold. She reads about his alleged ties to a diamond smuggling ring. She reads until the words blur on the page and her eyes sting. So many pieces, and none seem to fit. 

 Joan tosses the file on her lap onto a pile the edge of her bed and shuts down her laptop. Her head feels hazy and too full, bursting with names and dates. She closes her eyes and sees the pictures of Thando Khumalo, the awkward position in which her body was found. The pool of blood spread out under her. She was barefoot when she died. Something about this fact disturbs Joan, though she can’t quite say why. The vulnerability perhaps.

She takes off her glasses and lets her head fall back against the wall with a sigh. She should sleep. She should shake this off and tell Sherlock. She should, she should, she should…

The ringing of her phone jolts her awake and she looks at the clock on her bedside table. Luminous green numbers flash 2:26. She had dozed off for barely ten minutes.  

She picks up her phone and stares at it. She could ignore it. She  _should_ ignore it. She knows this even as she swipes a thumb across the screen.

“Hey.” 

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Joan closes her eyes. Thando Khumalo’s toenails were painted a bright purple. “I’ve been busy.”

“You’re not busy now.” Her voice is like warm and familiar, like hearing your favourite song on vinyl instead of shitty car speakers. Joan’s missed it, and the realisation scares her.

“And how do you know that?”

“Well, it’s nearly 3am. The witching hour.” It’s said playfully, and Joan sees the pull of her smile. Considering their correspondence has been largely incorporeal, it would be strange, she thinks, seeing Moriarty now, now that they’ve established this… bond. Strange and incredibly dangerous.

And Joan should tell her. She should tell her that they can’t see each other. Not now, not when Joan’s got a box filled with pictures of a dead girl. But instead, she says, “How did you know I’d be awake?”

“I took a chance. And maybe I wanted to catch you in bed.”

In reaction, Joan sits up straighter, and fights back a yawn “And why’s that?”

“I like the image it provides.” A pause and then, “I like thinking about you in bed.”

Joan swallows as her mind screams ABORT. “It’s a very dull image, I assure you.”

“Oh I doubt it. Tell me, Joan. Have you ever had anyone in that big, austere bed of yours?”

“Does a tortoise count? And how do you know about my austere bed?” Joan asks, vaguely aware that her voice has taken on the same coquettish quality present in Moriarty’s.

“I did some… investigating during my brief stay at your home.”

“You went through my stuff? Of course you went through my stuff.” Joan had thought about it before, about how much of their lives Moriarty had been invited to see. How much they had unwittingly revealed. So she’s annoyed, but hardly surprised.

“Oh, don’t be cross. I was curious, about this… partner Sherlock had taken on.”

“And what did your invasion of my privacy reveal?”

“Besides your fondness for skimpy sleep wear, nothing particularly subversive. I was rather disappointed actually. You proved utterly predictable. Until you weren’t.”

Joan’s about to reply when Moriarty says, “Oddly enough, I now find myself thinking about those sleep shorts of yours quite often.”

There’s something that appeals to her ego, having Moriarty talk about her, analyse her with that brain. It usually makes her uncomfortable, being picked apart, but it’s become strangely exciting. She falls into it. It’s easy, giving in, forgetting. Allowing Moriarty’s voice to wrap around her, pull her into this surreal world they’ve created sometime between then and now.

Joan shifts and the files at the edge of the bed tumble to the floor. And the photos of the dead girl fall face down and Joan can’t see them anymore. And for a moment, maybe they don’t exist at all.  And she says, “Where are you?

“London.”

“How’s the weather?”

This is something they do. Joan asks about the weather, Moriarty answers. It’s a strange kind of ritual, but somehow, it manages to tether Joan to her.

“Rainy, foggy, dreary. I adore it. I seem to think better when it’s raining. I suspect it’s the…”

 _Remember this_ , some part of Joan whispers. Remember these pieces of herself she offers up. They’ll be gone soon, the voice whispers. And Sherlock’s words from months ago, referring to Moriarty’s attentions, creep into her mind.  _So far as they remain benign, I remain unbothered._ It doesn’t  _feel_ benign anymore. It feels visceral and intimate. It feels dangerous. It feels good.

But it can’t go anywhere, can it? It can’t go anywhere, because there’s a dead girl with a pretty face, now rotten and buried and there’s a politician hanging from a ceiling fan and a hundred unanswered questions, and even if all of it disappeared, she’d still be Moriarty - a broken mirror of distorted faces, none of them quite whole. And so, while Moriarty waxes poetic about the rain, Joan interrupts and says, “Tell me something real. No riddles, no poetry. Tell me something real.”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m allergic to penicillin. Three years ago, I had an anaphylactic response and almost died.”

Joan says nothing. She doesn’t care about allergies, however fatal. It’s not what she wants. She wants…  _more._

“Not real enough for you?” Moriarty asks, sensing Joan’s disappointment through the silence. “You want something sentimental, something  _moving_ , something that expresses a hint of humanity you can latch onto in belief that you’ve seen the  _real me_.” It’s said with an edge of mockery – not malicious, but not entirely serious either.

And Joan replies, “Yes, that exactly what I want.”

And there’s a pause, a moment of contemplation before, “Do you know anything about astrophysics, Joan?”

“As in space?”

“Hmm.”

“As much as the next person.”

“As a teenager I found myself rather fascinated by it.  Stellar dynamics in particular held certain… pull for me. Excuse the pun.”

“I would if I had any idea what you were talking about.”

“Forgive me. Stellar dynamics relates to the stars and their relationship with gravitational force. Compared to something like celestial dynamics, it’s all rather chaotic, almost rebellious.” There’s this energy in her voice as she speaks, excitement that belies her usual glibness. “There’s a certain… optimism in cosmogony. It hinges on continuation, on hope. I suppose it appealed to me at the time.” A pause, heavy with memory. “I wrote a book.”

Joan’s surprised. She supposes she shouldn’t be, but she is. “You wrote a book?”

“I did. In fact, I spied it in Sherlock’s impressive library.”

“Does he know?”

 “I doubt it. Besides, it was lifetime ago. I was still half a child. But now you know about my love affair with the stars. It seems I have a fondness for things which are beautiful and remote.”

Absurdly, Joan blushes, and, as if sensing her discomposure, Moriarty continues. “Sometimes I think you further from me than even the stars, Joan Watson.” She laughs lightly, a self-deprecating kind of laugh. “I fear you’ve become something of a chimera.”

And Joan’s heart, that sinewy muscle, clenches. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t put me on a pedestal the way Sherlock did with you, with  _her_.” Softly she says, “I can’t be that for you.”

“What can you be for me?” It’s asked in a low, sombre voice and Joan is thrown off.

“I don’t- you know I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I don’t know. Both? Is there a difference?”

“Do you believe in the desire satisfaction theory?” Moriarty asks suddenly. “Do you believe that once we have sated that which we crave, the craving is demolished?”

She thinks about it for a heartbeat before replying. “No. I’ve worked with addicts. I’ve heard the phrase, ‘Just one more,’ too many times.”

“You believe certain cravings can never be sated?” Moriarty asks with a certain intensity that has Joan shaking her head, despite being alone in her room.

“I believe we can learn to ignore them, to fight against them, often successfully, but that doesn’t mean they disappear, it doesn’t mean we ever stop wanting.” And as she says the words, she understands where Moriarty is leading her and her own voice echoes back.  _It doesn’t mean we ever stop wanting._

On the other end, Moriarty is quiet, brooding and Joan is filled with sudden desire to see her. To have this conversation in the flesh. To watch the emotions she only imagines, play across the other woman’s complicated face. It’s a desire so incredibly startling, that she sucks in a breath and says, “I can’t see you on Friday.”

The reverie is broken. “Why?”

“Something’s come up. A case. I told you, I might have to work.” It’s not a lie.

And then, in a flat, emotionless voice, “This is because of the Khumalo girl.”

Joan’s heart feels as though it’s plummeted to her stomach. “How do you know about that?”

“Come now, Joan.” Her voice is patronising at best. “I make it my business to know when my name comes up in murder investigations. Especially one as high profile as this.”

“The FBI thinks you’re involved.” She’s asking without really asking. It’s a cowardly move, but the only one she’s willing to play.

"And you’ve already decided on my guilt, or you wouldn’t be pulling out of dinner." 

"It doesn’t matter what I think or how I feel. I work with the NYPD, I can’t be seen having dinner with someone under suspicion."

“ _Under suspicion_.” Joan can practically hear the sneer in her voice. “What an innocuous turn of phrase.”

Joan’s finds herself annoyed by Moriarty’s annoyance. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset by this. Considering what it is you do.”

“And,” her voice drops to a dangerously low timbre, “-what do I do?”

“You- you bankrupt empires, assassinate innocent people, use and manipulate everyone around you,” Joan feels strangely unfaithful as she ticks off Moriarty’s offences on her fingers. It makes her uncomfortable, she realizes, to lay it out like this. It’s new, this discomfort. Where before, she found a warped kind of satisfaction in reminding Moriarty of her crimes, now that reminder pricks at her skin and makes her feel slightly nauseous.

Joan continues, her own voice building with anger. Anger at herself, at the woman on the end of the conversation, at the impossible situation they find themselves in. “All to build this empire, all to acquire, what? Power? I’ve seen what you’re capable of. I’ve read the files. I live with the shadow of Irene, always lurking behind Sherlock’s footsteps. You have no right to feel indignant.”

Heavy, ruminating silence and Joan is tempted to ask if she’s still there.

Until finally, in a quiet, resolved voice, Moriarty says, “So ask me.”

Joan sighs. “Ask you what?”

“Ask me if I’m responsible for this.” 

She swallows. Two days of furious paper work, of scowling at photographs and scribbling down notes. Two days of dread, heavy in the pit of her stomach. And all she needs to do is ask. And she’s terrified. Because everything hangs on the answer. She doesn’t realize it until now, but this means something. And it  _terrifies_  her.

So Joan sucks in a breath and asks, “Are you responsible?”

“No.”

Relief is potent and covered in barbs of mistrust. “I’m supposed to take your word for it?”

“That’s all I have to give you, I’m afraid.” She sounds genuinely regretful. “I cannot compel you to believe me, any more than I can compel myself out of this situation. But you’re intelligent enough to realise that I would never use my name, coded or otherwise, in such an operation. If my name was seen, it was planted.”

Joan frowns, trying to still the urge to jump on this, to accept it blindly. “You’re saying you were set up?”

“I’m saying I was a god.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was untouchable. Powerful beyond measure. Feared. Revered.” The pause is dramatic, whether she intends it to be or not. “Until you. The money, the contacts, the information can all be rebuilt, reacquired. But the myth, you destroyed that. I was proven fallible. I made a mistake and it cost me my reputation. And you must understand, darling – in this game reputation is everything. Mine was compromised that night in that hospital room.”

Joan will never forget that dark expression, as she and Gregson stepped into the room. Sherlock looked tired, resolved, triumphant. Jamie Moriarty had looked like a cornered animal, with barred teeth and an arched back. She did not  _look_ defeated. She looked murderous. Her hot gaze had burned right into Joan, who willed herself to stare back impassively. There had been something else building in her expression. At the time, Joan had thought it anger, now she thinks it may have been surprise.

Moriarty continues, “My enemies have, since my incarceration and subsequent release, sought to further my demise. I suspect this was just one more attempt. It’s curious really.”

“What is?”

“Well, the alias Mary Riot was one I used in my younger days. There were few in my fold at that time and I was careless with my identity. The only person still around from back then is Dickson and he’s far too intelligent to try something like this.”

By “still around” Joan assumes she means not murdered, presumably by Moriarty herself. The name sounds vaguely familiar, until recognitions snaps and Joan snorts in disbelieve. “You don’t mean Dickie W, alleged associate of the Whitney gang?”

“You’ve heard of him then?”

“No-one has heard from him since Tony Whitney got put away in 2011.”

“Well, Watson, you do know your Liverpudlian mafia.” She sounds amused and Joan feels defensive.

“He’s mentioned a few times in one of Sherlock’s old cases.”

“Yes, he would be. And I assure you, he’s very much alive. And currently living in your fine city.”

“Could he be involved?”

Moriarty hums non-committedly. “It bears investigation, though I doubt it. I have people looking into alternative leads. Believe it or not, I’m as eager to have my name cleared as you seem in persecuting me.”

“I don’t want to persecute you.” And then, in an even softer voice, “I  _want_  to believe you, Jamie.” The moment is fragile and real, and Joan feels the weight of it pressing against her ribcage.

“Then believe me. I am not involved in this. I have done a great many things I’m sure you would find… repugnant, but not this, and not for some time.” Quietly, sincerely, she says, “Things for me have… changed since we’ve begun corresponding. I find myself evaluating certain decisions that before would have come easily.”

Joan imagines her ribcage splitting open to accommodate the swell of contradicting emotions shuddering about in her chest. “This doesn’t change anything. I can’t see you, not until the smoke clears.”

“And after?”

“We’ll see.”

“Joan?”

“Yes?”

“You understand, don’t you? What I’ve been trying to say? What all of these words mean.” There are stars in her voice, Joan thinks. Continuity. Hope.

“I think so.”

“And does it scare you?”

“You have no idea.”

“I think I might."

_______

**2 hours before**

Jamie lifted the glass of wine to her lips and sipped. It was dry, sour. An Italian vintage from a vineyard she’d recently acquired in the Aosta Valley. She barely tasted it now, as her mind focused on the coming hours.

She stared at her phone for a full minute before dialling the number by heart. Numbers were never stored, and call logs immediately deleted.

“Hullo?” The voice was deep and gruff.

She ran her thumb and index finger along the stem of the Bordeaux glass. “Is it done?”

“It’s done.” He yawned loudly. “All the bizzies need to do is sniff his way. It’s laid out all pretty.” She could still pick out the scouse in his accent, despite his attempts to hide it.

“And the phone transcripts?”

“Got Feelers on it. You remember Feelers from the Morocco job? Bit of a cunt if you ask me, but right clever. He’s fixed it just like you wanted. All that stuff with Danver clearly spelled out.”

“Good.” Another sip of wine, this time, she revelled in the taste.  “Very good. I want eyes on him.”

“On Feelers?”

Collins was loyal, but occasionally dim. “No, on Dickson. I want to be able to see this play out.”

“I’ll get someone on him right away.”

“Excellent.” Jamie turned to look out of the large casement window. From her the kitchen floor, she could make out the entire city. The lights, twinkling against the darkness, the moon, barely visible against the smoggy sky. “Mr Collins, one last thing.” In the distance, the arch of the Manhattan Bridge. “What’s the weather like in London?”

_______

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those interested in "reading" Jamie's book, check out 'The Dynamics of An Asteroid.'


	10. X

_June 2014 (two weeks post-release)_

The body pressing down on top of her is heavy and damp with perspiration, a slick muscled chest, hot against her breasts and she pushes up with the heels of her palm. “Off, I can’t breathe.”

He rolls off and out of her obediently, hitting the sheets with a bounce and Jamie wonders if the blood she’d drawn down his back would leave a stain. They’re expensive sheets.

She finds her current view much less oppressive than his pretty face.

There’s a spider on the ceiling.

It’s small, barely noticeable, but her eyes are keen, and for a moment, she watches its careful scurry towards the light fixture. A single dark creature in the centre of that white expanse – the image is jarring.

The mattress dips next to her as her bed mate shifts and sighs and she’s brought back to the present.

“We should get to work,” she says, swinging her legs over the side and sitting up. Her wrists hurt from where his fingers had gripped them.

“A little harder and I could snap you in two,” he had whispered against her hair as his thumbs pressed into her pulse point. And she had come hard then – a violent release born from months of solitude and all the restless energy her canvasses could not contain. There was a perverse kind of excitement in knowing that even as he had her, even as she moved beneath him, he thought himself superior, thought himself smarter, thought himself better.

There was a perverse kind of pleasure in knowing he was wrong.

But the high is wearing off and her skin feels tight, her thighs feel sticky and she wants him gone.

He leans over and runs his knuckles across the hollow of her back. She turns to look at him over her shoulder, at his strange expression that she can’t quite place. An expression that makes his typically beautiful face seem somewhat insipid.

“What is it?” She’s suddenly and irrationally annoyed by his presence in her bed, her room, her space.

“I missed you,” he says in a low voice she has not heard since they were young and foolish.

She stands up and away from him to slip a robe over her shoulders. From her large bedroom window, she can see the Thames, still and black in the clear, crisp night.

Her silence, he finds encouraging, perhaps a reprieve from her usual caustic wit and ventures, “I don’t have to leave tonight. We could-”

“I’ve an early flight. The sooner you can look over the ledgers, the better.”  Her eyes are focused on the distant darkness. She wonders what the sky is like in New York. It would be dusk. She imagines a sunset of rose and carrot hues, made vivid by decades of pollution. She had spent so long staring up at that sunset through her prison windows.

 And it _was_ a prison, despite the amenity of it. Despite her biscuits and tea. Despite her cordial captors. She had not admitted it, had not let them see how trapped she had felt, how utterly powerless. She was not, of course. Not really. There were always ways and means of escape. But she had needed to work within the system. And the system was slow.

Jamie understands the virtue in patience. How can she not when she has spent months, years even, plotting out certain events. Patience and meticulousness – these are her greatest weapons. And so, she had bided her time, sharing titbits of information that had them salivating, until convincing them to let her walk out a free woman was almost too easy. It was _almost_ disappointing.

And yet, since leaving, there are times when the world feels too big, like there is too much to conquer and claim. She is that spider in the centre of some great expanse, which was once familiar, once wrought by her one hand, but now feels alien and vast. There are times, and she won’t admit this to anyone (it’s hard enough admitting it to herself), but there are moments, in the early morning, when she wakes in a sweat, and thinks herself back there, and in those moments, she cannot tell if she’s terrified or relieved.

She feels him behind her now, even before his arms encircle her waist and she thinks, _he’s become too familiar, too comfortable_. Her thorns no longer prick the way they used to. And she shrugs out of his embrace, causing him takes a step back.

“You know I had nothing to do with Devon.” It’s the first time they’ve mentioned the name. He knows, better than anyone, perhaps, how deeply that betrayal cut. And yet in some ways, it was a refreshing reminder. _Trust no-one_. A lesson she had learnt long ago. A lesson hard forgot.

Through the thin satin of her robe, the glass is cold against her shoulder. “If I thought you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Right.” He reaches down and grabs his jeans from the floor. “But you still won’t let me stay the night?”

She turns to him. “Have I ever?”

His expression is guileless. “I thought-”

“What? _What_ did you think? Nothing’s changed.”

“You don’t believe that. Things are different. You feel it.” It’s a mawkish threat if she’s ever heard one and she’s not even sure if he knows how much he’s giving away.

“What I feel is none of your concern, Dickson.”

She’s bored now. Tired of this dull repartee, of his insinuations and puppy-dog eyes. The sex was good, she won’t deny that, but she thought she would feel sated, she thought she would be able to lose herself, but her delirium was short-lived and she’s left feeling more restless than before. Her fingers twitch at her sides, as if searching for a phantom paintbrush, or perhaps the ridged grip of a gun.

Still, this is necessary. _He_ is necessary. And so she says, “I’m going to take a shower. The cabinet downstairs is fully stocked. I’ll meet you in a little while.”

“I’ll join you.” He makes to pull down his recently pulled up trousers and she shakes her head silently, giving him a look that qualifies as a definitive  _no_.

“I can’t go home to Maggie like this.”

 Margaret “Maggie” Moreau-Wallis.  Half French, half-Irish, all money. She wonders if Dickson knows that his wife’s heritage mirrors her own. Most likely not. 

 Jamie’s very French mother had long succumbed to the cancer by the time she and Dickson had become acquainted. 

 She sighs and waves her hand, in a dismissive gesture. “Either you wait for me to finish or you leave now.” She doesn’t doubt for a moment that he’ll stay.

 Even so, she waits until she hears the creak of the wooden staircase. Waits until she hears his footsteps on the first landing, until she hears him shuffling about and the inevitable clink of glasses.

The rooms are all locked, save for the library and the kitchen. He’ll go where she intends him to go, see what she intends for him to see.

Only once she’s certain of his movements, does Jamie turn up the water until it’s near scalding.

Despite her every effort to shut him out, his words ring in her ears. _Things are different. You feel it._

Of course she does. Half her contacts are scattered to the wind, half her projects precariously balanced. Loyalty, she has been sorely reminded, is a fickle thing, and eleven months is a long time to ask power-hungry men to wait.

She leans back against the tiles as steam rises up around her, filling her nostrils, making her sweat, even under the water.  It feels good against her body, water hot enough to be fire. She imagines herself moulting, shedding one veneer for a newer, fresher skin.

A better skin. She must be better now, better even than before. She knows this.

She lifts her face up to the spray and gasps against the heat. She wants it back. All of it and more. She will make her landscape familiar again, reclaim that which was taken and annihilate those who seek to corrupt what she has built.

If Icarus had lived, would he have tried again? Would he have built finer wings, or left the sky to the gods?

She steps out of the shower and into a towel. There is something intensely vulnerable, she finds - in these few naked moments post submersion, when ones cells feel new and ripe. There are a handful of lovers she has allowed to see her like this. Less than a handful.

And so, she slips on dark leggings and a crisp white shirt. She applies make-up and pins up her damp hair, no longer woman who just fucked Dickson. She is above that. Above him. He merely needs to look at her to see that.

She finds him in the library, a tumbler of scotch on the mahogany guéridon, the dewy glass already weeping onto the coaster.  A half-smoked Camel dangles lazily from the side of his mouth as he squints at the spreadsheet she’s laid out for him.

He was a numbers man for the Whitney Gang. His intellect was probably greater than all of those thugs combined - which is why he was clever enough to remove himself from their company before their house of cards come crashing down. Jamie has always appreciated his deftness with figures, making them appear and disappear in just the right ways. She lets him see the accounts she won’t show her lawyers, the piles of gold hidden in her dragon’s hoard. Only a fraction of it of course. Only enough to make him feel needed.

She leans against the door frame, watching him. The fullness of his lips as they pucker around the cigarette. His high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows. It’s a rugged face, a proud face and one she appreciates for its aesthetic value. It’s also a face that, if her suspicions are correct, won’t be around for much longer. A pity.

“Can it be done?” she asks, startling him out of his deliberation. She crosses the floor lazily, the ice in her own glass clinking as she walks. The numbers she’s asked him to look at are mere distractions, shiny baubles around the real interest piece.

The Khumalo account.

It’s all guns. Guns and ammunition - making their way up the Indian Ocean current. But she doesn’t deal in arms. No. Gunrunning doesn’t particularly interest her. Insurance does. Investment. Money.

“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” he taps his finger against a figure. “This one stands out. The account number is different.” He looks at her for a long moment, considering, before he finally says, in a voice full of resolution, “What’s in Nairobi?”  

Jamie’s expression remains unreadable. The absence of a tell is one of her greatest talents. Inside, her grin is wolfish. “What have you heard?”

Dickson shrugs and tosses the folder back on the table. “Whispers. Only whispers.” He holds her gaze as he leans forward, elbows on thighs, like they’re sharing some great secret. As if she’s already taken him into her confidence. “It is true you’ve secured the Somalian H-zone?”

She offers him the hint of a smirk. “It’s all very tentative right now.”

“But Khumalo’s offered it to you?”

She makes a non-committal sound, causing him to whistle in appreciation. “Bloody hell.”

“Technically, he’s offered it to Milton & Co. He’s dealing primarily with a liaison.”

He thinks for a moment. “Mary Riot?”

A nod and he chuckles. “God, when last.”

She graces him with a wan smile. “He’s a powerful man, strangely ethical, considering. Getting him to accept the bribe was… difficult. I think it’s easier for him to deal with a woman, an underling, not particularly threatening.”

He snorts at the idea of her being “not particularly threatening” and downs the last of the whiskey. “I’m impressed.”

“Your endorsement is noted.” She doesn’t try to hide the sarcasm. “Although…”

“What?”

“Well, our most recent interaction turned rather sour.”

She waits a beat, a very calculated beat, watching his relaxed posture, the upturn of his lips, the way the hint of stubble under his lower lip glistens from the whiskey and she says, “During our last meeting he mentioned having… reservations about naming Milton as the ghost insurance firm, despite every assertion prior to my arrest that this would occur. It was as if he’s been convinced otherwise.”

Dickson sits up, as if she’s pulled at twin strings, attached to his shoulders. Rigid, he looks at her, his face the picture of curiosity and concern. “Perhaps he’s having an attack of the moral kind.”

“I’m not convinced. A year ago, this deal was solid. Now it is not. I want to know why.”

He reaches for his glass only to realise he’d emptied it. “You think he’s been swayed?”

“By whom? Devon was working alone, you assured me of that.” There is no accusation in her voice.

 “He was. I did.” He lies well, she thinks. Anyone else would see his sudden tension as concern.

She sinks into the arm chair opposite his and drinks from her glass. The whiskey is hot against her throat. A delicious kind of sting. She had missed the taste. “You’ve heard nothing then?” she looks him dead in the eye, “No whispers?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“This is a large contract. You know how important this is to me.”

He swallows. “I know.”

“I need you to look into Khumalo. Find alternate avenues for blackmail. There’s a granddaughter in New York. Perhaps she needs to be… approached.”

He raises his brows. “You want a professional?”

She shakes her head. “No. Under no circumstances must the girl be hurt. If Khumalo thinks she’s being watched, he might give, but should she be touched, hurt at all he will almost certainly run. I have worked too long at this to scare him into the arms of a counter organisation.”

And there it is. She cannot lay it out any clearer. Take this, you rat, she thinks. Take this and run with it. Run all the way back to the sewers. 

Dickson reaches out and puts his hand over hers. She fights the urge to pull back and smash her glass against his smiling mouth. “I’ll take care of it.”

She smiles back. “I know you will.”

He leaves soon after, still smelling of smoke and whiskey and the faintest hint of her perfume. She waits until she hears him pull away, until she’s sure he’s gone before she exhales.

She walks to the furthest bookcase in the study, the dark oak one beside the expensive Lexington couch. Behind the collection of leather bound Kant essays is a keypad, which, upon the insertion of a seven digit code, releases a mechanism that causes the bookcase to swing off its hinges, revealing the large, well-lit room beyond. She had the door installed when she first bought the place. It amused her, like something out of a Wilkie Collins novel. Now, it guards one of her most sacred spaces.

She leaves it open, allowing the library light to filter into the room. Although it is less of a room and more of a living space. It is the only space she trusts, revealing more of herself than the entire house.

The only furniture is an olive, threadbare couch that she obtained at an auction years ago and two paint splattered stools. Her books lay scattered on the various wooden crates that serve as makeshift tables, one of them supports a teacup from that morning, holding the remnants of her rooibos-orange infusion.

And on the walls – art. Her art. Her only and most private collection. Most of them done when she was much younger, when she was more… wistful. It shows in the tempestuousness of her work. She had a fondness for lighthouses and their solitary composition. Her proclivities have since become more abstract. She’s traded her vivid hues and brawling ocean waves for muted colours and urban landscapes. Stars have been replaced by streetlamps. Though the violence remains, ever present in her broad, unapologetic brush strokes.

Her latest piece, only partially rendered, sits against an easel. It had begun as a woman’s lithe body, tangerine and ochre against a canopy of blue, which might have been the ocean, just as it might have been the night sky. She had begun with subtle curves, and tentative shading, as if she were sketching a stranger from memory. Slowly, the form had taken on a familiar shape. Details began to emerge from the canvas as her brush sought to pull meaning from the ether.

And then, quite suddenly, she had stopped. She had decided against finishing it, as if she was afraid of what it might reveal. Of course, she knew what she was painting. _Who_ she was painting. It would, invariably be another version of the three she had completed while in captivity.

It was not the _who_ that consumed her, but the _why_. Why her brush pulled this way and that, why she could not exorcise the images that swirled around her brain, even as she plotted assassinations, as she calculated her losses, as she booked flights and consulted with lawyers.

Even as she rebuilt and restored the fragmented pieces of her former existence, Joan Watson remained.

And for the life of her, Jamie could not understand why.

And so, she avoids the canvas and these thoughts and reaches instead, for the book she had been reading that morning.

A collection of modern poetry, a habit she had picked up during her confinement. She enjoys the way the words wrap around her, how she loses herself in their dual meanings and infinite depths.

It’s a lot like painting, she thinks, the art of poetry. Both beautiful and ferocious, both truthful and deceptive. Her eyes flicker to that unfinished canvas and she almost laughs at herself. Now is not the time to indulge in this misplaced fixation.

In a few hours she will board a plane to her estate in Gavdos. There are moves to be made, pieces to be played. Dickson will carry out his orders, of that she has no doubt. But he is a mere fly, caught in her sticky web, and there are spiders that need to be dealt with.

Her restlessness has worn off and she finds herself contemplative. Perhaps it is the knowledge that her relationship with Dickson is well and truly over, perhaps it is the comprehension of the prodigious task she has ahead of her, or perhaps simply, it is the haunting presence of that unfinished canvas.

Whatever the source, there is one thing of which Jamie Moriarty is certain: 

She is _not_ Icarus. She is a god. And this time, she will not fall.

______

_March 2015 (present day)_

Joan wakes up with a jolt and a pounding headache that resembles a hangover. A squinty-eyed glance at her bedside clock tells her she’s been asleep for little over three hours. She feels disoriented as broken images flutter about her consciousness and threaten to flee as she gains lucidity.

Jamie. She’d been dreaming of Jamie. Or maybe it wasn’t a dream at all, but her subconscious retaining the memory of the voice and the way it seeped into every pore and swam under Joan’s skin like a thousand silver fish.

She remembers their conversation with less clarity than she’d like. Their exchange was affected by the early morning hours, when lack of sleep provides its own kind of delirium, which in the harsh light of day feels both startling and surreal.

She rolls onto her back and tries to recall the details of her conversation with Moriarty. Or Jamie. It’s always Jamie now. Strange, when she’s never actually called her that in person. So much of their relationship exists in the space left by the others’ absence. In the cracks of this reality. This is why, for the most part, Joan forgives herself for their indiscretions. It’s not really real, not a truly actualised thing.

As light filters in through the flimsy curtains, she tries to remember the name Moriarty had given her, tries to bring back the sound of her voice, the way the words had sounded as they spilled from her lips.  

She lies there until the sun creeps all the way across her floor and over her pillow and the smell of breakfast wafts up the stairs. She lies there until she’s absolutely sure of what she needs to do.

Sherlock is in the kitchen, flipping eggs with one hand, a mug of coffee in the other.

“Good morning,” he says so cheerfully she wonders if there’s been a murder.

She mumbles a thank you as he offers her coffee and scowls into the fridge. They’re out of milk. She’s not a fan of coffee without milk.

Joan leans against the counter, watching the sizzle of eggs and finally says, “I have to tell you something.”

“If this is about the toothpaste situation, I’ve already begun labelling my tubes.”  He’s clearly in a good mood. She hates that she’s about to shatter it. “There will not be a repeat of-”

“It’s about Moriarty.”

The spatula stills in his hand and very slowly, he turns off the gas. The heat remains and the eggs continue their sizzling, undisturbed - unlike Sherlock, who turns to face her.

“You have my full attention.”

_________

 


	11. XI

“Dickie W? You’re certain?” Sherlock walks around her, with both hands on his hips, staring intently at the ground as if waiting for the floorboards to confirm everything she’s been saying.

Joan watches him circle and pace, practically vibrating with twitchy energy. “According to her, yes.” She’s tired. Three hours of sleep and even then, obscure dreams of guns and blondes and dead girls. Blood pounds against her temple in a hard, steady rhythm and she prays the caffeine in the coffee will kick in soon.

Sherlock’s pacing does nothing to calm her own restless nerves. Still, she finds his reaction surprising. She’s not sure what she expected. A tantrum of sorts, she supposes. A long soliloquy expressing his concerns and disappointment. But so far, he’s only listened and now seems intent on parroting the facts back at her as if she’s the one making no sense.

“Dickson Wallis, accountant for the former Whitney Gang?”

She sighs. “No, Dickson Wallis the homeless guy who sells cigarettes outside the subway.”

He stops his pacing to look at her, all hunched shoulders and a scrunched up brow. “Your sarcasm, though well-timed, is not appreciated.”

She exhales in frustration. “Well you’re talking in circles.”

“I’m only trying to understand how his continued existence passed me by. The Whitney gang arrests took place during my period of inexcusable ineptitude. I followed it, through glazed vision, and assumed, like everyone else that Wallis had perished in the crossfire.”

His voice takes on that specific quality of shame of muted anger that Joan recognises whenever he speaks of his addiction in London. “Of course, I am not everyone else. I should have anticipated his exile to the New World.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, her body rigid with tension. “I think I’ve come to learn that people in this business have a tendency for not being dead when you think they are.”

“Indeed.” He taps his chin. “And you say that she inferred that he may be connected to this…” he waves his arm around in a dramatic gesture, “this case you’ve been working on.”

“’Working on’ might be an overstatement.” He raises his eyebrows in the direction of the files she had “borrowed” from the archives. “But yes, according to her, he’s the only person who knew about the pseudonym.” They don’t say her name – any of them. As if it was some dark incantation that could bring forth an unholy plague or something equally catastrophic. 

“I see.” They’re quiet for a moment as he contemplates this and Joan wonders at all that he’s not saying.

She’s told him about her talk with Captain Gregson, and her subsequent conversation with Jamie - she tries to force her brain out of this habit – _Moriarty._ She’s told him about their previous correspondence. Not in detail of course, and not the full extent of it, but it’s inferred and he’s clever enough to read between those crooked lines.

When he finally speaks, it’s to raise his mug and ask, “More coffee?”

“No, I’ll have tea.” She watches in silence as he methodically fills the kettle and turns on the gas. In a pan, on the stove, four eggs lie, cold and forgotten.

When Joan was ten years old, she and a group of the neighbourhood kids egged the house on the corner. The house belonged to an old war vet who spent all day on his porch, spitting tobacco and yelling at them if they stepped on the edge of his lawn. He had reminded her of one of those cranky old men in Scooby Doo, hiding under a monster mask. One of kids threw an egg against a window and they both smashed.

Later, in her father’s study, that always smelled of cigarette smoke and lemon wood polish, she stood with her hands behind her back, eyes fixed to the rug. She wasn’t usually allowed in the study. And now her father was standing over her, scowling and sighing and finally said, “What you did was wrong.”

She had scuffed her toe against the carpet and replied, “It was Tommy Cooper who broke the window. Everyone saw.”

And her father had gripped her chin between his fingers, tips callused from years of pushing down on typewriter keys, and made her look up at him. “Mr Lewis fought in a war, did you know that? He’s got no family, no-one to look after him. All he has is that house.” And when tears welled up in her eyes, he let her go and sighed again. “Do you feel bad about what you did?”

Ten-year old Joan nodded wordlessly and her father continued in that voice he used when he was tired of being angry and felt like being philosophical instead. “That’s because you know it’s wrong. That’s because you’ve got a tender heart. Your heart will always lead you the right way, Joanie. Listen to it.”

She didn’t tell him then, that she wasn’t crying because of Mr Lewis, but because she suddenly remembered that it was Alyssa’s birthday party the next day and was terrified that she wouldn’t be allowed to go. Alyssa was going to have ponies at her party. She really wanted to go.

Joan thinks about that now, as she watches Sherlock drop two teabags into two mugs and fill them with water.

She does feel bad, guilty even. But not for the reasons Sherlock would want. Not for those late night confessions or the flutter of excitement that would follow every call. It’s too late for that. She’s been an active participant for far too long.

It’s the _not_ telling that makes her feel guilty, and the fact that, deep down, given the choice, she’s not sure if she would ever have told him.

Since their first meeting Sherlock, has systematically unpacked and analysed her entire life. He knows her toothpaste preference and how she likes her tea. He’s studied her menstrual cycle; he knows about her biological father, and has even seduced her friend. They’re practically living out of each other’s’ pockets, which for the work they do, seems beneficial… most of the time.

But this, thing with Jamie… Moriarty. It was hers. Despite how it may have started, despite all of the fractured histories and feelings. Those phone calls, the secrets shared and trust given, it’s all hers. And she feels guilty for wanting to keep it that way. She feels guilty for being selfish and most of all, she feels guilty that it’s taken something so awful to bring it to light.

When he hands her the mug, she takes it gratefully and brings it to her nose. _Peppermint. "_ Where should we start? I thought we could try and find Dickson Wallis, though he might be listed under a different name. Might as well go straight to the source, right?”

He frowns, as if annoyed and shakes his head.

“You think that’s a bad idea?”

Sherlock lowers the mug on to the wooden table with some force causing her to flinch and says, “Come with me.”

___

He takes her up to the attic, which has become something of a private workspace over the past few months since she unapologetically banished him from housing his mould samples in either the kitchen or bathroom. “You probably shouldn’t enter without a gas mask,” he had told her one day, as he came down, in a cloud of sulphurous smoke and she assured him that she had no intention of stepping foot in his attic, mask or no mask.

And so she follows somewhat hesitantly, prepared for something out of a mad scientist’s head space. What she finds is decidedly more disturbing.

The attic has been cleared out save for a few wooden chests and an old cabinet. In the centre of the floor, is a rug. On the rug, is a worn leather armchair that must have been there forever since Sherlock could not possibly have brought it up on his own. In front of the chair, just next to the window, is a giant cork board.

It is, undoubtedly, the most thorough murder collage she’s ever seen. And it’s all about Moriarty.

Joan walks to it slowly, ignoring the musty smell of the enclosed space. Her eyes flicker with some wonder, over photographs she’s never seen and some she has.  Among the grisly images from crime scenes, there’s a smiling candid of a dead woman named Irene. It’s a spontaneous shot. You see the surprise on her face, as if she’s been caught unexpectedly. Her smile is bright and open and utterly guileless. Beside it is a photograph with which Joan is intimately familiar. One which, for months after that first letter arrived seemed burned behind her eyelids. Even in her mug shot, Moriarty looked dangerous. 

There are printed statements of accounts, even a few fragments cut from letters. In the right hand corner, attached with a paper clip, is a dried peony.

It’s macabre and beautiful.

Sherlock stands back, allowing her to take it in. This perfidious project of his.

Joan’s eyes settle on a particular photograph, pinned above a postcard. It’s a black and white print out, depicting a class of high school students. Typical in every way.

A group of girls, maybe thirty, stand against a grassy backdrop. Their blazers are as dark as their skirts, which Joan imagines might have been navy or perhaps green.  A kneeling student in the centre holds up a placard introducing the Class of ‘99.

It doesn’t take her long to find the familiar face among the crowd. Jamie Moriarty couldn’t have been more than seventeen or so. Hair in a ponytail, shirt buttoned up, blazer too long for her arms.  She stares directly into the camera with a bored, sullen expression that suggests she has far better things to do than pose for a school photograph. She looks, Joan realises with some surprise, like any other teenager. And the image strikes her as peculiar. It’s difficult to imagine Moriarty as anything other than a thirty-something criminal genius. As if she sprang into existence in Prada heels and perfectly conditioned hair. The girl in the photograph, with rounded cheeks and a perfectly straight school tie proves otherwise.

 “How did you get all of this?” Joan asks finally, unable to keep the tremor from her voice.

“Through great skill and determination.” When she turns to look at him, he admits, “Our good friends at Everyone were also able to help. It’s amazing what you can find on social media sites under the hashtag _tbt_.”

“I find it hard to believe that Moriarty has an Instagram.” In the face of this giant shrine, saying a name hardly seems shocking anymore.

“She does not. But Susan Elliot,” he hops forward and pokes a rather aggressive finger at a freckled-faced girl in the photograph, “has no such qualms.”

Joan takes a step back, surveying the entire thing as if it were a piece of art. She finds herself filled with a slew of conflicting emotions as she stands, quite literally between Sherlock and the monument of Moriarty.

It’s almost vulgar seeing it all displayed like this. Before, when Moriarty was just a case, just puzzle to be solved, it seemed logical. Sherlock’s collage seemed expedient and useful. Now, now it feels personal and like a betrayal. Except Joan’s not quite sure who’s being betrayed here.

Bright red strings run across the board, connecting photos of locations to accounts and statements – a visual trace of his wiry synapses, or perhaps the path of blood.

Among the myriad, Joan tries to find a single emotion on which to ground herself. She chooses detachment.

“When did this start?”

“A few months back,” he sits on the arm of the chair as she leans against the wooden chest next to the window. They face each other in silent conflict. “After our phone conversation.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, we’ve had a few.”

“Not with you. With her.” He inclines his head towards the board. “Moriarty. Or does she prefer you call her _Jamie_?” He says the name with discernible disgust. “I imagine she would. Give an animal a name and it becomes a pet.”

Joan swallows down a fizzy bubble of anger. Sudden and unexpected. “You called her?” It never occurs to her to imagine that it might have been the other way around.

“I did.”

“You never said anything.”

“Neither did you.”

Has it come to this, she wonders. A pissing match over whose betrayal is more valid, over who has dibs on Moriarty?

Mistaking her brooding for antipathy, he says, “Oh, don’t look so betrayed, Watson.” But even as he says this, he looks at her searchingly, like a child who knows he’s done wrong. “I could not stand back and watch this… train wreck unfold.”

“How did you know?” After the hospital, after she implied that she and Moriarty were in contact, after she told him not to worry, she thought it was done. Stupidly, she thought he had let it go.

“I overheard you.”

Her heart races and she finds that’s she’s embarrassed by all he could have heard. Soft spoken pleasantries, gentle barbs and intimate suggestions.

“You went quiet,” she remembers saying, one grey afternoon, while Sherlock was practising his single-stick and she was folding laundry in her room.

“Did I?” Jamie had answered lazily. Their entire conversation so far had been about nothing at all, weather, gardening, the wingspan of a hummingbird, and yet Joan had found herself thoroughly distracted.

“What are you thinking about?” This question usually led to an abstract answer like, “The Japanese stock market,” or “something Franz Kafka once said.”

But, on that afternoon, Jamie had replied, “The way you’d taste if I were to run my tongue along your neck.”

Joan had stopped folding then, uncomfortably aware of the rush of heat that had splintered through her.

She doesn’t remember what she said next, but it was something inane, something deliberately dull to douse whatever heat was pooling in her belly. But her voice had trembled, she remembers because Jamie laughed that victorious laugh and commented on it. And now she imagines Sherlock hearing that and finds that her embarrassment has become something resembling indignation.

“So you called her and talked about me like I’m a child to be protected from the big bad criminal.”

“I would not phrase it quite like that.”

“How then?”

Sherlock pushes up on his knees and he stands suddenly. “What did you expect, hmm? That I would sit and watch as she toyed with someone I lo-” The words catch in his throat and the half formed sentiment hangs between them in the musty air. “… for whom I care a great deal.”

The vulnerability in his voice throws her, tugs at her, unravelling the knot of tension she’s been carrying around inside. But still she will not, cannot give.

“That’s not how caring for someone works. You can’t sneak behind my back and-”

“Have a telephone conversation with an ex-lover turned arch-nemesis. Or have you forgotten?”

Her eyes find the floor. There’s a dark brown stain on the rug that might be coffee, or an overspill from one of Sherlock’s experiments. “Of course not.”

“I don’t bring it up out of… pride. I bring it up because you seem to be operating under a delusion.”

She wants to say, _she swore to me, she promised._ But even to her, that sounds puerile, and she’s struck by the disjunction between what she wants to believe and what Moriarty’s history suggests.

It’s an odd kind of position she finds herself in, fighting the compulsion to defend Moriarty to Sherlock. Sherlock, who fell for a phantom and for so long remained obsessed with her bones.

She feels like they’ve swapped the roles they had taken up a year ago, as he confessed that he considered the possibility of Moriarty’s redemption.

_In my weaker moments, I’ve entertained the notion that she might be able to change. I suppose because I’ve undergone a transformation of my own._

These words haunt her. They stay with her as she finds herself more and more inclined to believe them.

But to him she says, “I came to you with this, because I wanted to find out the truth.”

This seems to deflate his tirade somewhat and he says, with as much empathy as she’s ever heard from him, “You don’t want to find out the truth. You want me to help prove that she’s innocent.”

Joan swallows back the retort lingering on the tip of her tongue. Because he’s right.

“She might be innocent… of this,” she adds. “We can’t know until-”

“I’m sorry, just...” he holds his hand up to cut her off, “Were you here when she systematically orchestrated the cold-blooded murder of Andrej Bacera and his wife? Do you remember Sebastian Moran and his endless list of victims?”

She’s angry now, that he feels the need to remind her of Moriarty’s sins.

“I know what she’s capable of.”

He shrugs his shoulders as if he finds her incomprehensible. “And still, you continue to defend her.”

“I’m not defending her.” She’s aware that her voice has risen. It echoes back to her and she winces imperceptibly. “But I’m not going to automatically persecute her for a crime she may not have committed.”

“Suppose she is innocent of this specific crime. What then? Will you go back to being pen friends, eventually move on to dinners, sleepovers here at the brownstone?

Will you invite her to family affairs? She’s fluent in Mandarin, did you know that? I imagine she and your mother will get along famously. And you’ll be very happy. Until the next time her name comes up in some inconvenient murder case. Until the next time you’re forced to acknowledge the true nature of the one you love.” His eyes brim with a dark intensity as they bore into hers and she looks away, terrified of confirming his truth.

“I don’t…” she swallows and her throat feels thick and swollen. “It’s not like that.”   

“It may not be love, but it’s _something_. And it will eat you alive, Watson. You especially.” He exhales heavily, as if this expulsion of words and feelings has physically exhausted him. “So no, I will not apologise for wanting to keep her as far away from you as possible. Because I know. _I_ know how this will destroy you.”

She is struck by the simple truth of his argument. Because he does know. Better than anyone.

The simple truth is that there _is_ a connection which runs through all of them. And the facts are these: Sherlock was drawn to Irene and then Joan. Joan was drawn to Sherlock and then Moriarty. Moriarty was drawn to Sherlock and then Joan. And so, in the ways that Sherlock and Moriarty are alike, perhaps Joan is too. Not in in all ways, but some. Enough to have them all tangled up in this strange and pagan triad. It all comes in threes, doesn’t it? Wise men, gods and monsters. Perhaps they’re one of each, though at this point, she’s too tired to determine who’s who.

And so she sighs and says, “Okay.”

“Okay?” His tone is tentative.

“Okay,” she shrugs a shoulder. “When this case is done, I’ll end it, whatever the outcome. No letters, no phone calls. I’ll end it.”

She says it without thinking, as if this is the obvious decision. Because he’s right, isn’t he? She can’t go back. Not at this point, and going forward… well it’s unthinkable. And something inside Joan feels as though it’s tearing apart. A pull of muscle and bone and she knows it’s impossible, but it’s there. A remorse that is almost physical. Jamie's voice comes back to her, as if being called up from the ether.  _“You understand, don’t you? What I’ve been trying to say? What all of these words mean?"_

And Joan adds, “After I see her.”

Sherlock's face remains blank. But his jaw twitches, aching to forbid.  

“I owe her that,” she says.

He runs a palm up his forehead as if to flatten the creases, before meeting her eyes. “Because you presume her innocent?”

“Because she saved my life.” She says it with resolve, daring him to argue.

Instead, he nods solemnly.  “I hope you’re right about this, Watson. For your sake.”

She doesn’t respond, but faces away from him, towards the board, where Irene smiles, Moriarty glowers and seventeen year old Jamie stares back at her with those sullen eyes. 


	12. XII

“Do you know,” Jamie mused once, on a snowy evening sometime in December, during one of their earlier conversations, “-that love is one of the few, if not only emotion in the English language that we prefix with fall.” She had originally opened with an ee cummings quote (something about the raindrops and small hands) and stopped, in the middle, to meditate on the linguistic curiosity of “fall” as a prefix.

“We don’t fall in anger or regret,” she had continued. “We _feel_ it. And yet love, this nebulous concept to which you all cling, is prefixed with fall, as if it is an accidental emotion. Whoops-a-daisy, I’ve fallen in love.”

Joan had found herself half-listening, distracted by Jamie’s use of the very British phrase and smiled almost despite herself as she tried to imagine the rounded pout of Jamie’s lips saying _whoops-a-daisy_. It was comical, endearing even.

Jamie continued, oblivious. “I believe the prefix first appeared sometime around the fifteenth century. The religious binary of good and evil held fast. Up was good, associated with heaven. Down was hell. So fall, implied a corruption, a perversion. One could just as easily have fallen into sin as into love.”

“You fall asleep,” Joan offered. In the background, strains of Lakme’s Flower duet could be heard from wherever Jamie was, and Joan found herself pressing the phone to her ear, trying to catch certain notes. She had been happy that evening. They had closed a case. She and Sherlock had gone to a meeting, where he had participated rather freely. Then he was off with Alfonso, breaking into things. It had been a good day. Perhaps that was why she indulged Jamie’s hollow musing.

She still wasn’t sure what it was that they were doing, or why she allowed whatever they were doing to continue, but she wasn’t going to analyse it to death, not that night.

“Hmm. True. And sleep is another passive, arguably uncontrollable state.”

Joan opened the window in her room and a gust of wind blew in. The icy air smelled of car fumes. She shivered. “You think love is an uncontrollable state?”

Jamie sighed then, as though she had thought about it at length and found the answer to be lacking.

“To a point. If it wasn’t…”

“You wouldn’t have been caught,” Joan finished.

“It confounds me,” was all she said.

It was startling how often this topic came up, and how often they found themselves navigating the conversation through various combinations of the same themes. The way friends or couples who have been together for years find themselves debating the same topics with the same galvanised vigour.

It’s not that they never touched on the mundane. They did. Sometimes Joan would casually mention how terrible the traffic had been coming home, or Jamie would wax on about the sublime coffee she tried in a little café in Budapest.

“I’ll take you,” she’d say and Joan would fight every inclination to say, “Yes.”

But more often than not, it came to this, this unpacking of thoughts and ideas and the philosophies that that substituted as religion. Joan sometimes wondered if this was the closest they could come to unravelling each other without drawing blood. She sometimes wondered if it was enough, if she would ever want more.

And so, lingering stubbornly on the topic of love, Jamie had said, “Well it seems the driving force for so many things. That fascinates me.” And then a weighted pause. “As do you.”

Joan made a laughing, disbelieving sound. “The way a cat finds a bird fascinating in the moments before it rips its head off.”

“Are you afraid I’ll rip your head off, Joan?”

And then, with an honestly that was uncharacteristic in these earlier conversations, Joan had answered, “Sometimes.”

Jamie laughed then, a rich, warm laugh that Joan was just becoming familiar with, and said, “What’s funny, is how you assume I’m the cat in this scenario.”

The implications of Jamie being anything but seemed too baffling for Joan’s current mood and instead, she asked a question that she had spent far too long thinking about:

“Why do you do what you do?” It was a simple question, but as Joan asked it, she had felt like Atlas, and the weight of it made her shoulders ache.

There was a moment’s pause, just a breath and Jamie had said, with unwavering earnest, “Because I’m so good at it.”

Joan wanted to let it go, because it was a good day and she was happy and the conversation was fast becoming treacherous. She wanted to let it go, but found herself asking, “Would you ever give it up?”

The word she used was _would_. Would implied choice. They word she wanted to use was _could_. The question she wanted to ask was, “Could you ever give it up?” Wanting to know, needing to know that the possibility existed.

Jamie’s answer to the question was a simple, “No.”

And that was the end of it.

Joan thinks they might have gone to talk about the weather or a book she had read, or something equally inoffensive, something that didn’t threaten to tear at the seams of the fragile bond they had created.

But this is the part for the conversation she remembers, as she drives to a hospital bed, where a man lay dying, and her answers with him. That resounding “no” and the heavy and unexpected feeling of repulsion and disappointment that had accompanied it.

________

There is a strange kind of synchronicity in that it should come to conclusion here, in the very hospital where Joan had killed a man. Her therapist would tell her that as a surgeon, she had taken a calculated risk. Joan would argue that her calculated risk ended a man’s life.

And now, another man lies clinging to life and with him, her tentative hopes.

Dickson Patrick Wallis is thirty-six years old.

Post-operative. Unconscious. And in his chest, a sewn up bullet hole.

His wife has come and gone. She didn’t cry, but had looked at her husband with a sad sort of regard and asked to be contacted if his condition changed. She didn’t stand over him, or hold his hand, she didn’t fall asleep in a chair.

It was Joan who stayed, Joan who waited and paced and stared at her phone, both wishing for it to ring, and wishing it never would.

 

_**Three days prior...** _

“Despite everything I have just said, the woman is inarguably the greatest criminal mind I have ever encountered.”

Sherlock stands in front of his murder board, holding as a pointer, a wire hanger that he had pulled from the coat rack in the corner of the attic. Joan’s still not sure why there’s a coat rack in the corner of the attic in the first place.

“Over the past months, I’ve attempted to understand not only the scope of her empire, but also its primary functions. I’m ashamed to say, I’ve not uncovered half as much as I had hoped, except to find that it is vast and ever reaching.”

He stretches out an arm and points emphatically to a page of handwritten scribbles she wouldn’t have been able to read if she tried.

“A number of dummy corporations, I believe to be owned by Moriarty, as well as number of recognised businesses, in which she almost certainly has a hand.”

“What’s that?” Joan stands up and gestures to a question mark drawn with a thick red marker in the centre of a post-it.

Sherlock drops the hanger and turns to face the board, and they stand, side by side. “Through understanding the basic mechanisms of her organisation, I have come to believe that, in wake of her incarnation, a rogue organisation formed. Or perhaps a rival organisation that took advantage of her fall.  While this hypothesis is untested, I do believe, as you’ve said she’s mentioned that there is an opposing force to her,” he twirls a finger in the air, “empire of ruin.” Sherlock crosses his arms over his chest, as if to underscore the end of his lecture.

 “So…” Joan begins tentatively, her eyes scan the board. “You’re saying that she could have been set up?”

“It’s possible. Based on what we know about the Fuller incident, her trusted companions are not all that trust-worthy. I believe Gaspar was working under orders. That the dossier he wanted was not for personal use.”

“Yeah, he didn’t strike me as the mastermind type.”

“No,” Sherlock agrees. “Moriarty herself admitted that he had not the wit to use it adequately. He might have changed sides, but he was still a minion in the end.”

Joan sighs, nods and takes a step back. There’s something oppressive about the space they’re in, occupied by the giant patchwork of Jamie’s crimes.

“Have you found anything related to Khumalo?”

“Not explicitly.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…” he scowls, “no, not as yet.”

Joan’s faced with a mixture of relief and frustration. “Where do we go from here?”

Sherlock turns to her, “Where would you like to go?”

“Dickson Wallis,” she says. “Moriarty mentioned his name for a reason. I want to know what he knows.”

“We’ll need to find him first. Someone who has managed to stay unseen for this long is not simply going to-”

He stops when his phone buzzes. “Captain Gregson, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Joan watches the rise and fall of his eyebrows as he listens and then says, “Yes, I know the area. We’ll be there soon.”

“It seems,” Sherlock starts, shoving his phone into his back pocket, “That Dickson Wallis will have to wait.”

______

“Here’s what we know,” Gregson ducks under the yellow police tape and motioned for them to follow. “Suspected murder-suicide. The victim is John Danver.”

It takes Joan half a heartbeat to place the name, “Wait, your friend?” Suddenly the FBI van they just passed makes sense. John Danver, the man who first alerted Gregson to Moriarty. The man who uncovered the pseudonym. Dead. Joan feels vaguely nauseous.

Gregson’s mouth pulls into a thin line and he nods. “I wouldn’t say friend so much as colleague, but he was a good guy. Wife, two kids,” he shakes his head. “They weren’t here when it happened, thank god.”

Sherlock wiggles his fingers into gloves as they walk. “And the murderer?”

“British national, apparently here in exile. Goes by the name of Dickson Wallis. Feds are all over it, apparently the guy...”

Gregson’s voice seems to thin out. Joan stops. For a moment it all stops and she feels like she’s in a pinball machine that’s just been shoved into tilt. It can’t be coincidence, there’s no way…

“Where’s the body?” she manages when they turn and notice she’s not following. There’s a heavy, roiling wave in the pit of her stomach.

“Wallis is not dead. Medics were able to revive him. Ambulance left about twenty minutes ago.”

Joan looks to Sherlock, who, almost imperceptibly shakes his head, in answer to her unspoken question. They will not tell Gregson of what they know. Not yet. And Sherlock says, “The Porsche on the corner, I assume it belongs to Mr Wallis?”

Joan barely acknowledges the M.E, who greets her. They’d met at Marcus’ ‘welcome back’ night. She was nice, pretty. In different circumstances, Joan might have thought her more than just nice, now she barely acknowledges her.

Gregson hands them both shoe covers before pushing open the front door.

“Yeah, it’s his car. Neighbours confirm it was here at least an hour before any shots were heard. They found two letters inside. One addressed to his wife and the other to John Danver’s family. Sonofabitch wrote an apology letter.”

“So, they knew each other?” Joan posits.

“Looks like.”

They reach the living room. There’s a dark red stain on the crème coloured sofa, a pool of blood in front of the fire place, and on the wall, splatters that resemble some morbid Rorschach test.

Sherlock stands in the centre of the room with his hands on his hips, eyes moving from the sofa to the fireplace and back again. “And you say that Mr Wallis had been here for over an hour before the murder occurred. Which gave them time to talk.”

He crouches next to the coffee table and positions his nose over a mostly empty glass before giving it a hearty sniff.

“Well, they knew each other well enough for Agent Danver to part with his expensive whiskey.” He sniffs the glass again.

Another time, Joan would have asked if such vigorous sniffing was truly necessary. Now, it seemed imperative.

“I’m beginning to suspect that Mr Wallis did not come here to murder anyone.”

Gregson taps a pen against the notepad in his hand. “That’s one theory.”

Joan looks away from the blood splatters to face the men. “You have another.”

Sherlock stands suddenly, and scans the room, his head darting about like a meerkat atop a hill. He takes three long strides from the sofa to the fireplace.

“Wallis was packing some pretty heavy ammo.” Gregson starts, his bewildered gaze focused on Sherlock. “The kind of stuff used to kill, not to defend.”

“Dickson Wallis did not kill Agent Danver.”

Joan turns to look at whatever Sherlock has found on the mantle. “How do you know?”

And Gregson frowns, “What are you talking about?” The guy was found with the murder weapon still in his hand.

“Yes, awfully convenient, isn’t it.”

“You think he was set up?” Joan asks.

Sherlock looks at her, his face grave, and nods. “There was another party. Here.” He jumps on the spot, just next to the fireplace. “I postulate this person shot John Danver and then shot Dickson Wallis, making it look like an attempt on his life. No doubt assuming he would succumb to his injuries before the ambulance arrived. This was not a murder-suicide, but an attempted double homicide. I think you’ll find that Mr Wallis’ injuries confirm this.”

Joan moves to where Sherlock is standing, squinting, and holding his fingers out like a gun as her moves it across the room. “You’re saying Wallis is innocent?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying.”

“So who killed Danver?” Gregson sounds exasperated, “…and  tried to kill Wallis?”

Sherlock looks to Joan as he says, “I believe we have a working theory.”

______

Sherlock lies to Gregson. He does it easily and without hesitation. He is terrifyingly convincing. He tells Gregson of how Joan came to him immediately after being alerted to Moriarty’s possible involvement. He tells Gregson how they worked together to discover any links between the Khumalo case and Moriarty’s organisation. He talks and Gregson listens and finally says, “It’s not our jurisdiction. A Fed is dead and now you’re telling me organised crime is involved?” Sherlock tells Gregson just enough to relieve them of any responsibility, and the case, suddenly becomes someone else’s problem.

Joan sits in the driver’s seat, guilt filling up her lungs, and every breath is tainted. When Sherlock gets in beside her, she says, “Why did you lie?”

He does no look at her, not for a long time. And Joan inhales and exhales, guilt, guilt, guilt. When he finally speaks, he says, “I’m not convinced she is responsible. Not for this at least. She would not have given you his name if she was going to have Wallis killed. I believe,” he puts his finger to his lips and taps it a few times, formulating an answer, “- that she wanted you to alert the police to his movements. She knew, I think that there would be an attempt on Dickson Wallis’ life.”

Joan turns to him, realisation dawning. “She told me about Wallis because she thought I’d tell Gregson? And if they were watching him, they’d have a better chance of catching his murderer?”

Sherlock nods. “Which leads me to suspect that he was killed by the counter organisation.”

 “This still doesn’t explain how she’s involved in the Khumalo case. And what did Danver have to do with it?”

“We shall have to ask Dickson Wallis.”

______

They wait hours, then a day, then another. Joan brings coffee to the guard outside Wallis’ door. Neither she nor Sherlock have express permission to hang around, but Gregson pulled a few strings after Sherlock mentioned Moriarty. They know of his involvement and how helpful he had been in the past. This is his reward for good behaviour.

Joan gets a call on the third day.

“He’s awake,” Gregson says. “Barely talking, but coherent. Might wanna get in there before he asks for a lawyer.”

Sherlock isn’t at the brownstone. There’s a jam-stained post-it on the fridge. _With Demetri until later._ Demetri is a sixty-five year old Estonian barber whom Sherlock met at a meeting. He’s also a coin collector and they struck up an odd sort of friendship.

Joan could call and tell him about Dickson.

She could, but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want him there.  She wants to do this by herself.

She smiles at the guard at the door and wonders when last he’s slept.

Dickson Wallis seemed to have aged a decade in days since he’d been brought in. His face is gaunt and ashen, his lips chapped, his hair greasy. He’s an attractive man when he’s not lying in a hospital bed, fighting off an infection. Joan’s seen pictures. She wonders about his life, his wife and everything in between.

She drops her coat on a chair and walks to his bed.

“Mr Wallis, I’m Joan Watson.”

“I know who you are.” He’s got a South London accent, sort of proper, refined. She expected something rougher perhaps.

He tries to sit up and grimaces.

“You shouldn’t move yet,” she presses the button that allows his bed to elevate. There’s a jug of water next to the bed. She pours him a glass and helps him drink.

“Cheers,” he manages, all dignity lost as he sucks water up through a straw.

“How do you know me?” she asks, once his head hits the pillow.

He swallows, shuts his eyes, opens them again. Joan feels as if everything is happening in slow-motions. As if the answers are finally here and they’re being dangled in from of her, just out of reach.

“You’re his partner.” Dickson rasps. “Her boyfriend, the one who got her locked up.” There’s a second of confusion, until she realises he’s cut straight to it. Sherlock. Moriarty’s boyfriend. It’s a ridiculous turn of phrase and she finds an unexpected bruise to her ego as she fights the urge to correct him and say, “Actually, it was my idea that got her _locked up_.” But clearly, he’s in the mood to share, and Joan doesn’t want to jeopardise that.

His candour emboldens to ask, “Mr Wallis, did you kill John Danver?”

“No.”

Sherlock was right, of course. The ballistics report supported his theory of the third man. It was a good job, one that might not have been seen through had they not been on the scene that day. They also found the evidence of money transfers from Dickson’s account to Danver’s. Their involvement is undeniable.

When Dickson seems content to leave it there, Joan presses, “Do you know who did?”

He shakes his head. “Even I told you, it wouldn’t matter. It was a cog in a machine. A vast and impenetrable machine. You take the cog away, they’ll just replace it.”

She watches him speak. Even like this, Joan thinks, even broken and withering, there’s something about him.

“Do you work for Jamie Moriarty?”

Dickson laughs, then coughs and swears. This time, she doesn’t offer him water. Once he stops spluttering, those grey, chapped lips pull into a smirk “Well that’s the question isn’t it?”

“One I’d like the answer to.”

 “Why should I tell you?”

“Because I think she set you up.” Joan crosses her arms over her chest. “And the things I want you to tell me are the things she wouldn’t want me to know.”

“You think I’m that petty?”

“Are you?”

He smiles a different kind of smile. As if she amuses him. “I like you.”

“I’m not here to gain your approval, Mr Wallis.”

His smile fades as he says, “You’re lucky.”

“How so?”

“You managed to get to me before they did.”

“Who is they?”

“My employers.” He rolls his left shoulder and groans. “The people who killed John, tried to kill me.”

“Why were your own people trying to kill you?”

“Are,” he corrects. “Are trying to kill me. They’re not going to stop now.”

“Mr, Wallis, if you think you’re still in danger-”

“Miss Watson, if I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that they are going to succeed, I wouldn’t be sharing any of this with you. It’s only a matter of time.”

Joan’s first instinct is to argue, to urge him to value his life, but even now, she knows he’s right. And a morbid understanding passes between them.

“And if they don’t do it,” he continues, “she will. Betrayal is not something she forgives. Remember that.”

“Tell me how Jamie’s involved with this.” She doesn’t know why she uses her first name. Perhaps it’s because she knows she’s talking to dead man, or because something in her recognises a familiar of sorts. He’s in love with her. She sees that now. Understands it.

He sighs and his broken chest goes up and down. “For months prior to her arrest, she had been grooming Siyabanda Khumalo. He’s an ambassador, elbows deep in the Somalian trade.”

“You mean arms dealing?”

“Arms, drugs, piracy, the man is connected to it all. Her interest was in the latter. If she could secure her insurance company as the sole provider in a specific area, she’d stand to make billions. But then she was arrested, and the Khumalo account was vulnerable.”

“And the vultures descended.”

He nods, cringes and coughs. “By the time she was out, he was considering us as the better option. Only, she began to suspect that our loyalties were divided. After Gaspar fucked up, we were all at risk. So, she made up a story, told me that if Khumalo’s grand-daughter was hurt, he’d spook and run. Gave me a name that she’d been using with him. Of course, the minute the girl was killed and the name revealed, she knew I was responsible, and that we were actively working against her.”

Joan feels sick. She feels numb. And between the rasp of Dickson’s words, she hears the echo of Jamie’s voice. _I have done a great many things I’m sure you would find… repugnant, but not this…_

“And Danver?”

Dickson scowls, “He was a pawn. Initially worked for her, but switched over easily enough. He leaked the name, because we thought if Khumalo found out about it from the cops, he’d end it with her, but of course, she lied. She never used the name with him.” He laugh-wheezes. “Fucking red herring.”

Joan’s quiet. On the wall behind her, a clock ticks, the oxygen machine breathes loudly and somewhere down the hall, someone codes. Maybe someone dies.

There is a part of her that wants to know more, wants to know it all. About the organisation, about Dickson’s ties, about the murder itself.  At the same time, she’s done. The urge to walk out of there, out of the room, away from it all is overwhelming.

She feels Dickson studying her face, and finally looks at him, and his expression is sombre. The angry, cynic is replaced by someone empathetic, which might be a thousand times worse. He licks those chapped lips and offers her all he has left, a sad smile. “She always gets you in the end.”

“It’s not the end.” Joan reaches for her jacket and turns back to him. “Not yet.”


	13. (a conclusion)

Joan isn’t particularly romantic. She enjoys thoughtful gestures, and on some level, the idea of chivalry, but she’s never been disposed towards overt romance, or sentimentalism.

She picks the bench not out of some mawkish inclination, but because it represents closure. To end it here, in the place where they had their first phone call. To come full circle. Joan can appreciate that.

The day is different, as is the weather, the time. The first time, that first call, it had been June. Early evening. The day was golden and warm. The air wrought with fear and possibility.

It’s March now. Late morning. It’s cool and cloudy. The sun struggles through an oppressive ceiling of grey. And the world is in transition. Not quite spring, but too bright, too yellow to be winter.

She pulls her phone from her jacket pocket. She stares at it for a while. Then she dials.

It rings and rings and rings.

She is a coward, and relived when it eventually disconnects. But also, she is frustrated, because this must happen now. While she can still recall the sound of Dickson Wallis’ voice and the look on his face when he told her he was going to die.

She waits. A missed call will not go unnoticed.

She allows the sounds of the playground to invade her consciousness. A child screams out in pure, unadulterated joy. His mother calls for him to be careful. “Oliver!” she calls out from her bench, “be careful.” Oliver runs. He runs faster than he should and his rubber soles slip on the sand. He falls and scrapes his knobbly brown knees.

 Don’t cry, Joan thinks, watching him stand up on thin legs. He looks for his mother, out of shame and perhaps fear of admonishment. His chin wobbles.

Don’t cry, Joan thinks to herself. To herself.

The boy’s mother is turned away. She’s talking to another parent. She doesn’t see her son’s fall, and without her response, without her shocked face, her running to comfort him, her words of “I told you so,” or  “Honey, let Mommy kiss it better,” depending on what sort of parent she was, he has no reference for his emotions. So, he turns around and climbs back up the slide. He doesn’t cry. Joan is grateful.

The phone rings.

She swipes a thumb across the screen, but finds, suddenly that she is mute. Her voice has been scooped out of her chest, like ice-cream and replaced with scratchy static.

“Joan?” Jamie says her name as if it were a delicate thing. Her tone is tentative, uncertain. “Joan, are you there?”

“I’m here,” she replies, wondering why even that feels like a lie. She does not feel ‘here’. She feels ephemeral and thinned out.

Jamie waits. She waits for Joan to speak, to set the tone. She knows, she must know about Dickson.

When Joan does not speak. Jamie asks, “Are you all right, darling?”

The endearment throws her. Not that Jamie’s hasn’t used it before. She has, along with casual flattery and various innuendos. Most times it means nothing, an empty endearment with which to punctuate a sentence.

But it’s the sincerity that throws Joan, because on another day, before this all unravelled, she would have taken it for truth. She would have accepted it without question. She realises now how dangerous this thing has become. How far in she’s been pulled, swimming she thought, when in fact she’d been drowning.

She doesn’t talk around it, there’s nothing more to say except, “You lied.”

“That’s a rather abstract accusation.”

“It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. You lied when you said you had nothing to do with Thando Khumalo’s death. You lied when you said you didn’t think Dickson Wallis had anything to do with framing you. You lied to me, repeatedly. Why?” She knows, even now that the question is inane, that she is the frog asking the scorpion, _Why? Why did you sting me?_

And Jamie says, “Because I thought I would get away with it.” Simple honest narcissism.

“Well, you came close. You almost fooled me.” Her voice is edged now, steel-tipped. “And you know the worst part of it is that I defended you. Right until the end, I defended you.” Joan’s laugh is humourless. “So, congratulations, you’ve won.”

“This isn’t a game,” Jamie says.

“Then what is it, Jamie?” She wants to keep her voice hard and emotionless, but how can she? How can she pretend that this doesn’t feel a little bit like dying? “Because I’m struggling to understand how after everything, you could just-” the words get caught in her throat.

“You know who I am, what I do.” It’s unapologetic.

“Yes,” Joan exhales. “Yeah, and somehow, despite every instinct I chose to ignore it, or excuse it and it eats me alive, because how could I let you talk to me, and charm me and make me _feel_ these things and know everything you’re capable of? What sort of person does that make me?”

“Darling, you’re reading too much into-”

“Don’t,” she shakes her head, “Don’t placate me. It’s insulting.” A beat and Jamie is silent on the other end. “Do you know why Sherlock stopped writing to you?” Joan asks finally.

“He never said.” Her voice has lost that cavalier charm. She sounds wary, as if afraid of becoming trapped.

“He thought that continuing your correspondence would be endorsing your actions. He didn’t want that on his conscience. And still, I…” she pauses. The playground is empty. No doubt a response to those heavy clouds, gurgling and threatening to break open.

“I thought I was solving you,” Joan admits. “That was what I told myself. That it was a study, the way scientists study abnormal flowers or insects. And then I stopped questioning it. And I… I kind of just let whatever was happening happen. And it’s… it’s a betrayal of everything I am-”

“For godssake.” Jamie sounds exasperated. “You’re upset because I lied to you. You’ve a right to be, but I didn’t kill the girl.”

“No, but you knew that Dickson Wallis was working for another agency. You gave him just enough bait to orchestrate the murder.”

“I never intended for him to actually murder her.”

“But it doesn’t matter that he did.” She’s annoyed with herself as she swallows back angry tears. “She meant nothing to you.”

“No, she didn’t,” Jamie freely admits. “But you do.”

“It doesn’t work like that. You can’t pick favourites and then just destroy everything else.”

“Why not?” Her annoyance bleeds through and pricks at Joan’s skin.

“Because,” Joan answers, tired. Suddenly so tired. “Because you’re right this isn’t a game and we aren’t all your pawns. If this is what you think it means to have power, then I pity you. I pity you and this sick, lonely world of yours. Because there is only you, Jamie. There is no-one else. And that connection you’re looking for is impossible, because you’re incapable of co-existing without having dominion.”

“There’s you.” Joan wonders if she imagines the fracture in her voice, she wonders if she’s managed to wound that guarded, snarling creature in Jamie’s ribcage or if it is merely a projection of her own battered heart.  “What you feel for me-”

“Disgusts me.”

It’s a specific brand of self-loathing, now that she can admit to it. Only because it’s the end, and in the end, there is a kind of catharsis in truth. “And that’s something I’m going to have to live with. Because I thought I knew you, or that I was somehow special. And somehow, that appealed to my ego, I guess. When in fact, you’re a stranger to me.”

“You say that and yet I’ve given you more than-” and here her voice does crack, Joan’s sure of it and she wishes she didn’t care, but it’s satisfying, that Jamie should suffer from this rift. Satisfying and also, despite everything, validating.  

And Jamie continues in a steady, unreadable tone, from which Joan pulls every possible meaning. “I won’t justify my actions. But you should know, that all of this was set into motion, long before you and I became… friendly. Long before you meant anything of worth to me. I can’t regret these decisions, because my goal was achieved. And I am nothing if not ambitious. But I regret what this has done to us.”

Joan’s inclined to say, “There is no us,” but she won’t add to Jamie’s pile of lies. Instead, she says, “I think somewhere along the line I forgot who you were. And that’s my fault. Because people can change, but not people like you.”

“People like me,” there’s a hollow laugh, devoid its usual richness. “And what about you, Joan? Are you not like me? Is there not something in you that responds to me? Something animal, something visceral?”

“I’m not like you.” A fact. “And whatever I saw in you, whatever the draw was, it’s gone.” A lie.

There’s a long moment of silence. Above her, the dark sky teases destruction, but fails to follow through.  

“I am,” Jamie begins slowly, as if every word is weighted, measured. “I am bound to my cause, as one is bound to a name or a face. To change would be to lose all sense of self. And yet,” she pauses, inhales, exhales and for a moment Joan imagines that perhaps this is as shattering for Jamie as it is for her. "In fanciful moments of late I’ve considered alternate avenues of trade. Toyed with the possibility that perhaps, I could unlearn my habits. I told you once that we rarely, encounter a catalyst strong enough to alter our behaviours indefinitely. If there was ever such a thing, it would be you. If there was a reason for self-annihilation, it would be you. You are my ruin, Joan Watson.”

This is the closest, Joan realises, that Jamie will ever come to admitting the depth of her feelings. She speaks as though it is fathomless and infinite and Joan is drowning, drowning, drowning.

“It’s over,” she says finally and she feels it. The sinuous tether that between them is snapped. “No more letters, no more calls. We’re done.”

“Is this how you would leave me then?”

Joan opens her mouth to speak, but finds that she has nothing left to say. Her lungs are empty, words have dissolved into breath and she has been hollowed out. “Goodbye.”

She pulls the phone from her ear, and uncurls her fingers from it. That thin, black device through which this impossible bond was formed and broken.

She sits there until, as if cued by some divine conductor, the sky breaks in one terrible clap of thunder. A vivid conclusion, jarring in its finality.

It’s the kind of symbolism she would have found interesting enough to share with Jamie. And they would have discussed the rain in March and the summer Jamie spent in Brittany and how Joan loved those moments after a thunderstorm, when everything was both still and wild.

But none of these things will come to pass.

Joan stands up and leaves the park with rain dripping off her hair and streaming down her cheeks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's suddenly occurred to me that the title of the chapter may be somewhat misleading. This is not the end, merely one sort of conclusion.


	14. XIV

Seven minutes after Sherlock tells her that Jamie Moriarty is dead, Joan goes into shock. She knows it’s shock because of the way her heart rate flutters and then decreases, the tingling in her fingertips, the fluctuation in her temperature. She takes stock of these symptoms and thinks, I should eat something. And so she does. She cuts into the blueberry scone she’d bought that morning from the bakery, dissecting it in two perfect halves. She transfers her half onto a plate and picks at it. It’s sugary and too rich. She thinks she may be sick. But the scone stays down, and her stomach settles and when she’s done eating, Jamie Moriarty is still dead, but Joan feels less disoriented about it.

The facts, as Sherlock recounted them, are straightforward and unambiguous. A meeting had been arranged in Islamabad between Moriarty, two of her employees, and Nadeem Raman, the head of Pakistan’s largest petroleum export company. Twenty minutes in, a petrol bomb went off inside the restaurant, destroying the entire floor and killing at least sixteen people. Moriarty’s body had been identified via dental records and a charred passport found on what was left of her person.

Joan had, predictably asked if it was possible that she had faked her death as seemed to be a hobby of hers. It was certainly not _im_ possible, Sherlock maintained, but they had video footage of her entering the building and none of her leaving. The incident was fairly publicized, as Raman was a well-known business figure. The culprits were not identified, or if they were, the American system was kept out of the loop. Which is why Sherlock, and by proxy, Joan only found out about it four days after the bombing.

Four days, Joan thinks, staring blankly at blueberry scone crumbs. What had she been doing in the past four days while Jamie had been dead? Solving a case, having dinner with her mother, tentatively agreeing to a coffee date with one of Marcus’ friends, aggressively _not_ thinking about Jamie Moriarty. The latter was becoming easier.

It had been three months since their final conversation. Three months punctuated with letters and telephone calls from Jamie, all of which Joan had studiously ignored.

Three days after Joan had put it all to rest, her phone rang. The number was private, so she let it ring and ring until the sound threatened to drive her crazy and she put her phone on silent for the rest of the day. A week later, the first letter arrived. Joan was in the kitchen, adding banana to her smoothie, when Sherlock walked in and wordlessly handed her the envelope. The familiar handwriting made her throat close up and the urge to open the envelope and devour its contents was overwhelming. So Joan shoved it into the blender and hit 3. When she was done, Sherlock looked over her shoulder and said, “I would not advise drinking that.”

A few days after that they were in the study, cross-legged on the floor, frowning over a pile of spreadsheets that may or may not have been the key to cracking the case, when Sherlock’s phone began to play “Devil in Disguise”, Joan was momentarily amused until she caught the flicker of disquiet in Sherlock’s face.

“How long has she been calling you?”

“A week or so,” he replied. “I have not answered.”

They were quiet, and Joan went back to squinting at spreadsheets. She didn’t look at Sherlock when said softly, “Sometimes I wonder if the reason I was drawn to her was because I was responding to some darkness in me.”

Sherlock said nothing for a while and then sat up and leaned back against the foot of the armchair, his feet tucked neatly beneath him.

“On the contrary. I think,” he said slowly, “that you were responding to a light in her.”

Joan had looked at him curiously then and Sherlock continued. “Not goodness, mind you,” he shook his head tightly. “I don’t believe she possesses an ounce of goodness. But perhaps,” he shrugged, “perhaps a shred of humanity.”

He looked down, frowning at the paper in his hand as if it had somehow wronged him, and Joan thought that the conversation was over, but then Sherlock said, “You succeeded.”

“I succeeded?”

“Hmm.” He nodded emphatically. “I truly believe she cares for you. In her own way.” It was Joan’s turn to look away. It was strange hearing Sherlock talk about Jamie and herself without snide disapproval or sulky belligerence. And for the first time, it felt to Joan as if they shared a secret, or as if they had both committed a crime and gotten away with it - bonded by guilt and their intricate understanding of the crime.  

She looked up when Sherlock said, “Unlike her fascination with me, in the end, she did not pursue you because you were a challenge or a rival. It was because you had shown yourself to her. I know from my own experience how moving that can be.”

He watched her for a long moment, as if to make sure that the weight of the sentiment had not suffocated her. But she met his gaze and nodded, her eyes full of soft appreciation.

They didn’t speak of it again.

More letters came after that. They were spared the blender and instead went straight into the recycle bin.

Two months passed without any attempts at communication, and then, on a Thursday afternoon, while Sherlock was buying locks, a postcard arrived.

The photograph was a William Blake painting entitled “The Night of Enitharmon's Joy”. Despite her screaming instincts, Joan flicked her wrist over and read the message. Jamie’s looped script filled up a single line which read, “If a thing loves, it is infinite.” A quote by Blake. Joan had to google it to find that out. She toyed with the idea of ripping the postcard in two and instead added it to her collection of letters that Jamie had sent in the beginning of their relationship. Letters which Joan found she couldn’t dispose of, despite the way they wailed and shook in her bedside drawer, begging to be read and understood.

A week later Sherlock knocked on her door, and waited which was peculiar in itself because Sherlock never waited. But he had knocked twice, and Joan had looked away from her closet, into which she had been staring for the last five minutes trying to decide what to wear to her “not-quite-a-date” that evening.

“What’s up?” she asked, after she invited Sherlock in and he ended up standing at the door, with a sort of vapid expression on his face.

“It seems-” he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, his eyes on the bed. Joan frowned, sensing his uneasiness as if it was radiating off him in waves. 

“What is it?”

“I have received word from one of my contacts at the IB,” Sherlock looked at her. “Four days ago, there was an explosion in Rawalpindi, Islamabad. Sixteen people were killed. One of the bodies has been identified as that of Jamie Moriarty.”

His voice cracked at the last word and Joan saw the redness of his eyes and the trembling of his hands and she thought: He loves her. Even now.

Joan sits in the kitchen. She pushes the plate away with a look of distaste. She wonders if she’s going to cry. She hopes not, but there’s this heaviness building inside of her and her mouth feels hollow, like it’s making room for a scream or a sob. When she swallows all she tastes is sugary phlegm. If regret had a taste, it would be blueberries.

The ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall has somehow aligned with her heartbeat and she sits there for a very long time, listening to the tick, tick, tick. Outside, garbage is being collected. Somewhere, a whistle is blown. The world goes on.

Joan thinks of the postcard. The nightmarish image of Hecate and her familiars.

_If a thing loves, it is infinite._


	15. XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me that it's been about a year since I began this story, with little hope of anyone reading it, let alone enjoying it. 
> 
> So to all who have left me kudos and comments, to all who have been here from the beginning and to those who have just discovered it, to those few who, through their own writing, inspire me to be better with every sentence, every chapter... thank you so, so much. ♥

They go to London.

It’s the middle of June. Sherlock assures her that this is the perfect time for a visit. The weather is unwelcoming and it rains continuously. The sky is a heavy, oppressive grey. Mornings smell like bus fumes and human discontentment.

Joan loves it.

Perhaps even more than the first time she was there. Perhaps because New York had begun to feel haunted. The brownstone, the parks, cafes and street corners.

The first time she sees Jamie, Joan is crossing a busy street on a Friday morning. The woman in the café window is blonde, dressed in a tight green dress and facing away, so Joan can only make out her profile. And her heart scrambles to her throat. She crosses the side street and goes straight to the window, looking in with her palms pressed up the glass like a penniless urchin outside a candy store.

The woman, of course, is not Jamie Moriarty. Not in the café, not on the subway, not in the MET or on a walkway. She could write a children’s book entitled, “Where’s Jamie?” only there’d be no happy ending, and while she isn’t particularly well versed in them, she’s sure that children’s books usually have happy endings.

The best thing about London is that Jamie is nowhere. Which is surprising, considering, but Joan suspects that it’s because every scene is so foreign and new that her grief-mad brain can’t focus on projecting ghosts into them. And she can lose herself in the alien landscape.

They come because one of Sherlock’s ex-colleagues at Scotland Yard had called. It’s a fascinating case – poison and postage stamps. They solve it within a week. And then, for some reason, they stay.

Not forever. Joan is clear on that. She doesn’t want to leave New York. But the change is nice. Good. Sherlock seems to recognise this and, in a surprisingly intuitive gesture, he gives her space.

He’s broken up too. He’s cracked and frayed and they don’t talk about it.

If they did, Joan might have said something like, “She loved you first.” To which Sherlock would respond, “She loved you more.” And nothing would come of it except heartache. So they don’t speak of it.

“I’m leaving you,” Sherlock says, one rare, sunny afternoon.

Joan is in the little living room of the apartment. It’s one of Mycroft’s and beautifully furnished. The previous tenant had relocated, leaving almost everything behind – including a gigantic grey cat, appropriately named Napoleon. When Sherlock and Joan had arrived, Mycroft was in the process of trying to get the “darned thing hanged or sent to the electric chair, because it’s a bloody nuisance.” Either to be contrary to simply because he liked it, Joan wasn’t sure which, Sherlock said that he would keep the cat. Of course, this was without consulting Joan, who isn’t particularly sold on cats general.

“Look at him, Watson. Is he not magnificent?”

“He’s licking his junk.”

“Pure, undisturbed masculinity.”

"He’s not coming back to New York with us,” she states firmly, knowing full well that he might. 

On this particular afternoon, Napoleon is sunning himself on the floor next to Joan’s chair.

Joan looks up from her book when Sherlock makes his grand announcement. Capote’s _Cold Blood._ She’s never read it before. “What?”

“For a week and a half,” he clarifies. “I have been offered the opportunity to observe and perhaps even partake in an architectural dig in the Orkney Isles. You’re welcome to join me, of course, but you might find it beneficial to spend this time familiarising yourself with London. It’s amazing what one discovers on one’s own.”

Joan processes this. She has no desire to go digging for artefacts on the Scottish coast. She nods her head and says, “Have fun with your dinosaurs.” 

She spends a few days acclimatising to her new found solitude. Sherlock had been right, of course. There are things you discover when you’re on your own. And London is a revelation.

The third night, Joan stays in. It’s raining hard and the lamps shine orange on the dark, slick streets.

The traffic is muted by the downpour and becomes a sort of symphony in itself. A dull horn, the swerve of tires like a violin played off key, drunken vocals as Friday night crowds leave pubs, and the ever constant percussion of raindrops. 

Joan is in her favourite spot in the living room, where a fire blazes. It’s not quite cold enough to justify a fire, but she likes the ambience it provides. A fire, a book and a glass of Chianti. It’s the kind of perfect evening one envisions for oneself. She’s happy, for an hour. And then she’s bored. And then she’s lonely.

Joan has never done “on her own” well. She likes her independence, she likes her freedom, but she also likes being part of something, being with someone. It makes her feel solid in a world that otherwise threatens to carry her off like dandelion blown against the wind.

It’s been years since she’s been part of a couple. Her partnership with Sherlock doesn’t count. He’s the air blowing her from one adventure to the next. She can’t count on him to keep her rooted.

She leans back against the plush leather armchair, nestling down for another chapter, when she hears it - footsteps on the landing.

It might be Mycroft, she thinks, getting up quickly but soundlessly, her wool socks soft against the wooden floorboards. Every other time he’s arrived, he’s rung the bell and waited to be buzzed in. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between he and Sherlock that this place was to feel like her own. She decided who entered and who to keep at bay.

Light steps trudge wetly up the steps and then stop. The door rattles and opens.

Joan rounds the corner, fire poker in hand.

And then she freezes.

There, between the front door and the kitchen island, drenched and shivering from head to toe, is Jamie Moriarty.

“Hello Joan.”

Joan drops the poker. She doesn’t mean to, but her hands go slack and it falls to the ground, hitting the tiles with a loud clang that has Napoleon skittering from his sleep spot upon the piano to under the table.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I must look a sight.”

Something inside of Joan cracks and begins to burst apart. As if she were a crude crayon drawing on a piece of white paper that was slowly being torn down the middle.

Here is Jamie. Alive.

Joan swallows. She blinks. The world narrows to a pin point where all goes dark except for the shining vortex, at which Jamie is the centre. There’s a blinding sort of pain mixed with confusion.

And in the silence there is only the drip, drip, drip of water off Jamie’s clothes, her hair, her cheeks.  

Joan opens her mouth and words arrange themselves to make meaning. “Do you want a towel?”

Jamie Moriarty’s face is a blank tableau. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t betray a hint of emotion. But in a soft voice, softer than Joan has ever heard it, “That would be lovely.

Joan turns. She feels disoriented. She trails her fingertips against the smooth walls as she walks, as if she’s woken at 3am and is grasping her way to the bathroom in the dark.

She goes to the cupboard where the linens are stored. She opens it and reaches for a thick, fluffy navy blue towel. She does all of this methodically, her actions deliberate. Her hands don’t shake, her heart doesn’t thud.

She goes back to the kitchen, half expecting the soaked apparition to have disappeared. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

But she’s still there, sitting on the piano stool, her stockinged knees pushing together as she leans down and coos at Napoleon who winds around her ankles, purring in a way he’s never done for Joan or Sherlock.

Figures that the ghost of Jamie Moriarty would seduce the cat from hell.

When Joan comes closer, Jamie looks up, her wet hair falling in dark blonde clumps over her eyes. A beautiful, bedraggled mess.   

“He’s precious,” she says, scratching Napoleon behind the ears.

Joan swallows down a scream. It might be a sob. It’s pushed back down before she can find out.

She hands out the towel and says, “Here,” though what she wants to say is:

 _You’re_ here. You’re _here_.

Jamie takes the towel from her and dips her head before ruffling it through her sodden hair. She dabs her neck, her chest. Her clothes still drip all over the kitchen floor. The piano seat where she had been sitting has a large wet stain on it.

“I’m making such a mess of this.” Her voice is coloured with self-deprecation and Joan’s not sure if she’s referring to the wet tiles or the surprise visit.

Joan watches Jamie’s unsuccessful attempt to dry herself. Her hands are white, her fingers pruned. And she shivers under the pale blue shirt that clings to her body like a second skin. Through the transparent material Joan can see the white lace of her bra, the dark dip of her belly button. She’s trembling.

“You should get out of those clothes and get into a shower.” Jamie looks at her with the barest hint of surprise. Perhaps it’s gratitude. And Joan adds, “Assuming you have time.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

Joan shakes her head slowly. “The bathroom is up the stairs. I’ll get you something dry.”

She looks at Joan for a moment, her head cocked slightly, those blue eyes heavy with something Joan can’t define. And then she says, “Thank you, d-” and catches herself at the last moment. “Thank you.”

She chooses the bath in favour of the shower. It’s three minutes of pipes groaning and water roaring into the giant claw-foot tub and then silence.

It’s unnerving.

Joan looks at the puddles left on the floor, being sniffed at by a curious cat. She should clean it up. But she doesn’t. She stares at the dirty pools as the silence grows heavy around her.

For days, weeks, a month after that terrible morning, Joan waited for a call, a postcard, a sign. It wasn’t wishful thinking, she would tell herself as she checked the mail compulsively. It wasn’t the madness of grief. Reason suggested that it was perfectly logical that Jamie Moriarty would fake her death. She had done it before, quite successfully. But one week turned to two, one month to three and eventually Joan had thought, if she was alive, she would tell me.

Apparently, she was wrong.

She supposes the default reaction should be happiness or at the very least, relief.

And yet.

The problem is that Jamie being dead, though startlingly painful, also made things substantially less complicated. It’s an awful reality to face, but true.

Having her alive and here, all trembling body and beating heart, all blue eyes and transparent shirt - it’s something Joan can’t quite comprehend.

For months they spoke, unravelling each other layer by layer, exchanging words like weapons, and later like kisses. But in the distance, there was safety and the worst Joan was tempted to do was return a phone call at 3am.

But to look at her now is to feel, to _remember_. And she doesn’t want to remember. Not warehouse rescues, and rare white orchids, not whispered confessions and all those lies, lies, lies.

A year, she thinks, counting back the months. Almost a year to the day since their first phone call. She wonders if Jamie’s planned it this way. If somewhere in her twisted mind this is an anniversary of sorts.

There’s a slosh of water and the guzzle of the drain and Joan’s heart begins an unrelenting thud. She feels sick and excited and terrified all at once. 

Jamie comes out, ten minutes later, dressed in soft grey yoga pants and Joan’s knobbly red sweater that’s seen better days. Her face has been scrubbed of all make-up, her hair is up in a loose bun and Joan is reminded of Irene and her fragile few days in the brownstone. Jamie plays fragile well.

The puddles are gone, and the cat is back on the piano. The apartment smells like burning wood and the scent of lavender and patchouli body wash wafting out of the bathroom.

“Your clothes are in the dryer,” Joan says and her voice feels scratchy, unused. What she’s really saying is, you’ll be ready to leave soon, not sure if she wants Jamie to confirm or contradict that sentiment.

But Jamie says, “Thank you, that’s kind of you.” And Joan wants to laugh suddenly. Because they’re being polite. So outrageously polite, but Joan can’t seem to stop herself, as if filling up the space between them with meaningless words will build a wall of pleasantries strong enough to keep them apart.

“Do you want a drink?” She walks to the oak liquor cabinet, stocked with ridiculously expensive everything.

“Whiskey,” Jamie says and Joan pours two glasses before offering her one.

The fire crackles and Jamie twitches, the ice in her glass clinking. Joan sits across from her, in the same armchair from before, her book long forgotten.

A moment goes by and Joan waits. The burden of proof, or in this case, confession is not on her. She’s under no obligation to speak. And so she waits until Jamie says, “You’re wondering why I’m here.”

“Among other things.”

Jamie turns her head slowly to look at Joan so directly, that Joan feels her cheeks flush. “You look good, Watson. Rested.”

If this is the game they’re going to play, Joan wants no part in it. She done talking in circles and wasting paper-thin words.

She takes a sip of whiskey which warms her throat and prompts her to ask, “What happened? In Islamabad?”

Jamie’s lips quirk up. It’s the first time she’s smiled. “Did you did you miss me, Joan? When you thought I had expired? I was worried that the shock of it might…” she narrows her eyes as she considers her words. “-damage you.”

“What do you want me to say? That it was easy?” Joan meets her gaze unflinchingly. “It wasn’t.”

“But here you are. Looking better than ever.”

“What happened in Islamabad?”

Jamie brings her bare feet up under her to sit crossed legged. She sips her whiskey. “You know about the bomb, about the meeting. It goes back further than that. I knew, throughout my incarceration that the world I would re-enter would not necessarily welcome me back, that certain changes would have to be made. I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to resort to such… extreme measures, but after what occurred with Dickson-”

 “You mean after you murdered him?”

“I did not.” She takes another sip of her drinks and licks the excess off her lips.  

“You might not have pulled the trigger, but you set up a series of events that led to his death.”

Jamie scoffs. “Dickson was hardly an innocent.”

“Thando Khumalo was.”

“Yes. And I regret orchestrating the circumstances that ended her life.”

It’s Joan now who makes a noise of incredulity and Jamie looks at her with curiosity. “You don’t believe me.”

“You really expect me to?”

“What would you like me to say, Joan?” She straightens her back and looks at Joan with an earnest expression that belies the impatience in her tone. “Tell me and I’ll say it.”

“I want you to explain to me how you came to be here and not a heap of charred ash in Pakistan.”

Jamie draws her fingertip down the dewy glass, seemingly fixated by its progress until her gaze flicks back Joan.

“The first time I plotted my death, it was for the benefit of one man.” She raises her eyebrows at Joan as if to say, _you know this_.  “I needed to move on from him, I needed to escape him. If I’m truthful,” Jamie looks back to the swirling amber liquid in her glass, “I needed to escape the version of myself I was becoming with him.”

Joan says nothing. There’s a heaviness in her stomach. Jamie’s candidness makes her feel strange, unprepared, as if in this sincerity there's no room for Joan to hide.

“This time was rather more complicated. I needed an entire organisation to believe I had died.” Her voice lowers. “I do not take lightly to being hunted.”

"The people Dickson was working for?"

"Le Gardien they call themselves. And they are... impressive." She spits out the word with a look of distaste. 

“You orchestrated the bomb? All of those people?”

“All working for Le Gardien.”

“And so they deserved to die?”

Jamie doesn’t blink. “Yes.”

That heaviness in Joan’s stomach roils over and over and she can’t quite consolidate the sensation with the heaviness in her chest that seems to come from a different source entirely. Were she to describe these symptoms to Sherlock, he would, no doubt tell her that what she’s experiencing is the terrible tension between revulsion and desire. But he’s off getting dirt under fingernails, and Joan is left to fend for herself.

“They were plotting against me. An entire organisation seeking to usurp all that I had built.” Jamie downs the last of her whiskey and grimaces into the glass. “It would not do.”

The callousness of Jamie’s simple answer rattles her and she shakes her head. “I can’t believe I-” she falters and Jamie fills her silence with a derisive tone.

“What? Missed me? Mourned for me? Me, this monster, this murderer.” Joan only looks at her and Jamie’s mouth pulls into an awful sort of smile. “You hate yourself for it.”

Joan’s answer is a single syllable of truth. “Yes.”

“And for loving me.” Jamie’s smile has fallen away now, and she’s left with a guileless expression. She doesn’t pose it as a question, almost daring Joan to deny it.

She doesn’t.

Jamie’s laugh then is soft, reticent. “I’m well aware of the self-loathing that comes from loving that which you should not. In fact, it seems to be my fatal flaw. Ironic really, considering I had spent so long immune to its clutches. Until Sherlock.” A weighted pause. “And you.”

Joan shakes her head. “You don’t know how to love.” She believes it as she says it.

“Perhaps not.” Jamie blinks slowly, considering Joan as she says, “Perhaps what I feel, this… consuming preoccupation, is the closest I will come to understanding what you call love. Perhaps I am too wary, to critical to allow myself to give in to what I consider a fallacy. And yet here I am. Preoccupied. Consumed. By you.”

“Why are you here?” The whiskey swirls around her head, mixed in with the Chianti from before.

“I’m going to disappear. For a long time. Possibly for good.”

“What about your empire?” She says it with a tinge of disdain.

“I can do so much more from the dark. I was the wizard before. The man behind the curtain as it were. Now I must become shadow. Until I have all my pieces in play, I cannot give Le Gardien nor any agency cause to move against me. Moriarty, for all intents and purposes, did die in that restaurant.”

Despite herself, Joan asks, “Where will you go?”

Jamie shrugs. “I don’t know yet.” It’s a lie. They both know it, but it’s one of the less insidious ones and Joan lets it go. 

“I could tell Sherlock, the police.”

Jamie smiles. It’s a sad sort of smile. “But you won’t.”

Joan wants to argue, wants to fight against the fact that Jamie presumes to know her. She wants to tell her that her allegiance does not lie with a murderous sociopath, wants to hit her fists against some hard surface and yell _no_. No, I don’t want _this_. No, I don’t want _her_.  

But she’s tired and there’s whiskey in her blood, and even from across the room Jamie smells like lavender and patchouli and Joan sighs.

“What do you want from me?”

Jamie sets her glass down on the floor and leans forward in her seat, her eyes dark in the flickering firelight. In a careful voice, she says, “I want you to tell me that despite all of my flaws, and all that which you consider detestable in me, that you feel something, that I am not alone in this fixation." She looks down, traces her thumb her along the edges of her fingernails and says in a near whisper," I can bury it, Joan. I can put it to bed and disappear and it will be over. Only if I know that I am not alone.”

Seconds pass, perhaps enough to make up a minute. Perhaps enough to make up two.

Joan stands, willing herself to stay steady and take three steps forward, until she’s right there, next to Jamie’s chair.

She looks down and Jamie looks up and it’s inevitable. It’s been inevitable since Jamie first stood shivering in the kitchen, since the first phone call on a hard park bench, since those gunshots rang out in a dark warehouse and Sylvia Plath shook from inside Joan’s night stand drawer, screaming out her love song.

Joan exhales and reaches out a hand.  

“You’re not alone.”


	16. XVI

Jamie was fifteen years old when she first read _Wuthering Heights_. She had spent the stormy afternoon sprawled on a rug in the library while the wind battered against the windows, and in the distance the Irish Sea crashed on the cliffs of Cape Clear. It was apropos for the reading of Brontë’s gothic fare, but adolescent Jamie was unimpressed by the novel even as she flipped page after page.

She remembers this now, as Joan sighs against her cheek, their bodies tangled up in sheets and each other. Jamie remembers reading Catherine Earnshaw speak of her love for Heathcliff as _necessary_. _A source of little visible delight, but necessary._ They were fools, she had thought at fifteen. Why would anyone succumb to such torment? She couldn’t fathom it. And yet now, as she listens to Joan breath, as she feels Joan’s ribcage expand and contract beneath her, Jamie thinks that perhaps she understands the inevitability of it.

There were moments, quiet moments, stolen moments, before it felt like everything fell apart, when Jamie would wonder about Joan and indulge in fantasy. Imagining the way she would sound as climax splintered through her body, the way her skin would taste, how her body would feel, the pull of skin over muscle and bone.

And still, nothing would prepare her for the sound of her name, a reverie from Joan’s lips. Jamie had imagined fucking her, imagined taking her, devouring her until the backs of her teeth tasted like Joan’s perfume. What she had not imagined, had not ever conceived of, was that it would be Joan who took her hand and led her to the cold bedroom just down the hall, while she followed with a giddy sort of thrill.

She had not foreseen this outcome, and it bothers her, it scratches at her skin and makes her uncomfortable in the worst kind of way. She doesn’t like the emotional ambiguity that Joan yields. She doesn’t like that she cannot anticipate her own reactions. She predicts that Joan will swerve left and instead she goes right, she predicts that Joan will submit and instead, she resists. She predicts that Joan will be cold, but her body, her words, her mouth – all hot as she bites and tears at Jamie’s skin, as if trying to climb inside. Jamie thinks she would let Joan lived there if she so desired, somewhere beneath her breastbone, in the hollow cavities behind her ribs.

She falls asleep quite by accident, to the sound of the rain and Joan’s rhythmic breathing.

Jamie dreams of storms and rain-rattled windows and on intemperate moors, an intemperate woman calls out for a cruel and adamant love and her sorrow clatters through Jamie like the wind.

She wakes to an empty bed, in an unfamiliar room. Pale, diluted sunlight creeps in from under thin curtains. Outside, London has begun its daily, dirty bustle and Jamie yawns.

She sits up with a wince as her tired limbs protest. Her body is a canvas of red and purple hues where Joan has left her mark.

Jamie throws on a robe and last night’s underwear. She combs her fingers through her hair and grimaces at the refection staring back at her from the oval bathroom mirror. She looks like she’s survived a battle. Barely.

There’s a cat on the counter, beside a vase filled with orange tulips. The air smells of coffee and toast. It’s alarmingly domestic.

Joan’s back is turned to her and Jamie’s bare feet make no sound against the cold tiles and so she says, “Hello.”

Joan spins around, her body tense in a moment of surprise until she sees Jamie and she relaxes. Curious, Jamie thinks, how a year ago, months ago even, the inverse sequence might have occurred.

Joan’s expression now is tentative, but without antagonism or any of the bone weary resignation the previous night had drawn from her. She looks, Jamie thinks for one fanciful moment, almost hopeful.

“There’s coffee.” A beat. “And tea.”

She’s nervous, Jamie realises, and then with growing surprise, finds that her own heart has begun a curious sort of fluttering that creates waves of uncertainty in the pit of her stomach. It's a first.

“Tea,” she says eventually and then adds belated, “Thank you.”

They say nothing as Joan pours from a pot of already brewed tea. Jamie sniffs it and finds notes of citrus. Earl Grey. She sips it slowly, letting it warm her as Joan turns back to the stove top where she chases eggs around a pan until they’re yellow and fluffy.

“Toast?” she asks holding up slice of bread and Jamie nods.

“Have you any marmalade?”

Joan wrinkles her nose. “Marmalade is disgusting. It’s like candied orange.”

“Heathen.” Jamie’s lips quirk up wryly as she hops off the stool in pursuit of the jam. “You’re in England now, darling. A healthy predisposition to marmalade is necessary.”

“I’ll make a note of that.”

Jamie opens cabinets above Joan’s head and cupboards at her knees, moving past her in a strange little dance as Joan reaches for the salt and butters the toast. She finds the jam next to the breadbin and swipes a healthy layer over the toast Joan offers up on a white china plate.

Joan has eggs, Jamie has jam. Joan sips her coffee, Jamie drinks tea. They don’t talk about fake deaths or arranged murders. They don’t talk about anything much at all.

Joan says, “It doesn’t look like the rain’s clearing up.” And Jamie hums in reply and chews her toast. She’s beginning to feel the bruises on her inner thighs from where Joan’s fingers had dug in.

Rain splatters against the windows when she leans forward, across the smooth kitchen island and kisses Joan with marmalade on her tongue. Joan’s mouth is bitter - she tastes of coffee and want. She responds enthusiastically, like she’d been waiting to be kissed. Her hand tangles in Jamie’s hair and she arches forward so that they’re awkwardly fused at the lips.

“Come back to bed,” Jamie murmurs against Joan’s temple. “Forget the day and come back to bed.”

It’s a heady, almost unfathomable thing that Joan Watson should desire her so. In the beginning of their… involvement (Jamie, even now, is hesitant to all it a relationship) she had found a certain thrill in flustering Joan, in teasing her, in pushing her to admit that she had certain feelings that went beyond curiosity. And though she’d never admit it to Joan, in the beginning, it _was_ a game. Admittedly one that Jamie was fumbling through, but it was entertaining, it was exciting, until it was something much more.

She knows the exact moment that it all changed. She knows it because the shift was so jarring, so visceral, that it had left her shaken to the core.

She dreams about it sometimes. Too many times.

In her dreams, she doesn’t get to Joan in time. In her dreams, she arrives after Negretto has flayed the skin from Joan’s skull. There’s blood on the floor, on the walls, on Jamie’s hands, indented into the grooves of her palms. Jamie’s never flayed anything before, and her mind is unfamiliar with the process, so it conjures up the most depraved image it can manage. She stares into the hollow void that was once Joan Watson’s face and reaches for her gun but finds only the smooth wooden grip of a paint brush. “I’m sorry,” she says to no-one at all. “I’m sorry.”

The reality, thankfully, is not as bleak. There _was_ blood on the floor, but it was not Joan’s. It was Negretto’s after Jamie had disposed of her entire barrel into his chest. He’d fallen to the ground with an undignified thump. Or, Jamie supposed he had. She doesn’t remember much beyond the image of Joan on the chair. Bound, and halfway to broken.  Joan had looked up at her, with dark, unfocused eyes and had let out something of a sob.

There was a moment then, as she held Joan’s limp body in her arms, as she pushed back the sweat-sticky hair from Joan’s forehead that something in Jamie was altered, as if her body was made of tectonic plates that shifted and caused a rift, a fault line right down her middle.

She remembers thinking, _Never again. You will not be hurt like this again._

And it has shocked her, the fierceness of her conviction. Not even with Sherlock had she felt this… protective. Possessive, certainly, but hardly protective. Even as he stumbled and eventually fell, she had watched with regret and profound disappointment, but the temptation to save him was miniscule. And then he became inconvenient, a distraction, and his recovery made her curious and she thought that perhaps he was not as weak as she had initially perceived. And she loved him, even as she hated herself for it. And still, despite every complicated feeling regarding Sherlock, Jamie had never felt the bizarre pull strangely akin to _tenderness_ that she felt while holding Joan’s head in her lap. Tenderness that later manifested itself as an orchid, as a postcard, as a kiss.

She wonders if Joan will ever know this, or if she will ever summon the nerve to tell her. It wouldn’t accomplish much, she knows. She isn’t some love-struck idealist. But she’s tempted, every once in a while to ask if Joan knows how singular she is, how utterly extraordinary she must be to have so deftly unravelled the threads that tie Jamie’s world together.

She suspects Joan must, in part, understand how important she is. Jamie hopes foolishly (because hope in essence is a foolish act), that it’s because Jamie’s own feelings are somehow mirrored in Joan.

This time, when they undress, it’s without the urgency of the night before, as if they’re in a shared delusion where time is insubstantial and nothing matters but their limitless desires. It’s a fever dream of sorts, something removed from reality.

Jamie tugs at Joan’s pyjama bottoms, scraping her teeth against hipbones, making Joan gasp and writhe. She enjoys this. She enjoys the ways in which she can make Joan lose herself. Jamie realises that she wants nothing more than for Joan to lose herself, to come unravelled under and over her fingertips. She wants nothing more than to bury herself in Joan, beneath her skin, between her sinews, through her veins, until the blood that pounds through her temples sings only Jamie’s name.

She’s unaccustomed to wanting the unattainable, she’s unaccustomed to anything _being_ unattainable. Jamie makes a point of taking what she wants. With Joan, it’s different. With Joan, she cannot take, nor can she simply expect to be given the way Sherlock so easily gave. 

Instead, Jamie gives more than Joan will ever know.

She trails her lips across Joan’s abdomen, feeling muscles twitch and jump against her lips in anticipation. Joan’s fingers find their way to her hair and she’s being urged down by her impatient lover.

She makes Joan cry out, again and again, a stream of profanities and prayers so interwoven, Jamie hardly knows which is which.

Joan pulls her up roughly, kissing her with a feverish intensity. They sit, still entangled in each other and Joan arches against her, into her, gripping her shoulders as she buries her face in Jamie’s neck. Her breath comes out in fast, ragged pants and she moves even closer, rooting herself in Jamie’s lap. She cries out as she comes, Jamie’s name stuck like a barb in her throat and Jamie thinks that perhaps, in this case, hope might not be the worst thing to have.

Joan slumps against her with an audible sigh. Their bodies are hot and sticky and if it were anyone else, Jamie would have shoved them off to make space to breathe, to separate herself from the physical intimacy of being wrapped up in another human being. But with Joan, she stays. With Joan, it’s different. Every time.

“When are you leaving?” Joan's voice is a whisper against skin. 

“Soon."

She will leave, of course. It had been decided well before the incident in Pakistan. She will spend a year in Switzerland. It’s all been arranged. She has a property there, one of her favourites in the Bernese Oberland region along the Reichenbach stream. A year, she has decided will be adequate time for her to “manage” her affairs. In retrospect, she admits to the naiveté of her post-incarceration actions. Her belief that she could simply take back what was hers by intimidation and extortion was perhaps a little misguided. She has come to the conclusion that her enemies have roots that go deep and spread far and she must cut them off at the source.

She also finds that her motivation to do so, has dwindled somewhat. Oh, she wants them to be annihilated, that much is certain. But beyond that, beyond the reclamation of her throne, she finds herself at a loss. For the first time in perhaps a decade, Jamie is not quite sure what will come next.

It was, she had discovered, surprisingly daunting to leave the name Moriarty behind. Although, it would not be the first time she had given up a name. Jamie Eleanor Desmarais had given up her French matronymic in favour of her father’s Irish name at the age of sixteen, after her mother had succumbed to the slow-suicide of untreated cancer.

As Moriarty, Jamie had cultivated some her of her greatest relationships, and accomplished some of her greatest feats. She’d built an empire on the name. And yet, despite the connection she feels to it, she has also become increasingly aware that it no longer fits the way it used to, as if it were a dress that, before the Macedonia deal, before Sherlock, before Joan bloody Watson, had fit perfectly, but had since become uncomfortable. She scratches at the fabric, pulls her arms through holes too small. It chokes her sometimes. It isn’t right anymore, and the knowledge of that has floored her.

 If she isn’t Moriarty, she’s isn’t anyone.

“Sherlock won’t be back until Thursday,” Joan mumbles, her breath a flutter against the curve of Jamie’s neck, pulling her out of her myriad of thoughts and back into Joan’s embrace.

Jamie pulls back. Joan’s eyes are dark, her lips kiss-swollen, her cheeks pink, still flushed with the after effects of her orgasm. She’s exquisite, Jamie thinks and she says, in a voice more cautious than any she’s used before, “The longer I stay-”

“I know,” Joan cuts her off softly and lets her head fall against Jamie’s shoulder. “I know.”

Jamie stays the week.

______

They’ve become very good at pretending that this isn’t a bad idea wrapped up in a terrible situation and Jamie takes certain pleasure in play acting. She always has.

They’re in the little lounge, on opposite couches. Joan flips idly through a home and gardening magazine while Jamie reads Ishiguro. They don’t mention Jamie leaving, or what will happen after.

They spend time in the kitchen as Joan cooks and Jamie watches, they make love in the middle of the day, they read and talk about the places they’ve travelled, the places they want to go (Joan’s list is longer than Jamie’s).

Joan’s voice reaches her as if from far away and Jamie looks up from the book in her lap. She’s caught the tail end of the sentence, which ended with the words “scare me”, and she raises an eyebrow in question.

“Hmm?”

Joan’s resting her cheek against the heel of her hand, elbow propped up on the arms of the chair as she watches Jamie. "I was asking if you really had seven people killed in restaurants or if you only said that to scare me?”

Jamie’s lips twitch. Joan’s voice is light with curiosity, not accusation. It’s a strange thing and Jamie says, “Well, if I did it didn’t work, did it?” She narrows her eyes a little. “You were never afraid of me.”

“Oh, I was,” Joan admits with a wry sort of smile. “I just hid it well.”

“You did.” Jamie agrees. “And no, not seven.” She shrugs almost carelessly, “Only two. It’s an awfully complicated set-up. Rarely worth the trouble.”

Joan is quiet for a moment and then lets out a humourless, incredulous little laugh. “What am I doing with you?”

Jamie blinks and then, in a moment of complete honestly, says, “I’ve been asking myself the same thing.”

This is the closest they come to talking about “the outside” and all it entails.

Only once, as Joan fills up the dishwasher and Jamie runs her fingers through Napoleon’s thick grey fur, does she ask, “Are you glad I’m here?”

Joan says nothing for an age, before turning around to look at Jamie. “I don’t… ”she starts and then nods as if to validate her feelings. “Yes.”

Jamie is quiet as Napoleon purrs on her lap.

_______


	17. (the last interlude)

He arrives a day early. The dig was tragically uneventful and, if he is completely honest with himself, he was bored without Watson. Their shorthand communication was something he valued and suddenly having to explain himself to people, having to interact with the world without her there to mediate seemed unnecessarily taxing. It used to worry him, how emotionally dependent on her he’d become, how tethered. When he brought this up, she had looked at him as though he was utterly moronic and said, “You know what friendship is, right? You’re allowed to want to spend time with me.” This had mollified him somewhat. Still, he isn’t quite comfortable with the feeling of relief that comes from knowing he’ll be back in her company after merely a week’s sojourn.

The flat is dark when he enters. It’s almost two in the morning and he suspects Watson to be asleep. She’s hedonic when it comes to her sleep hours. He lets himself in and drops his suitcase by the door with a loud thump. If he’s awake at this very reasonable hour, Watson might as well be too. He wants to tell her about his new theory regarding labour division during the Neolithic Age.  

But the flat is quiet and nothing stirs. The cat, of whom he has grown quite fond, sleeps upon the piano, curled up with its tail between its legs.

He moves to the kitchen for water and notices it immediately. Two wine glasses. They’ve been rinsed hastily and turned upside down to dry, but the stain of burgundy and sourness of grapes clings to the glass and he sniffs. Merlot.

His immediate thought is that his scoundrel brother had somehow wheedled his way back into Watson’s bed, but Mycroft is in Spain, he knows this for a fact. He also knows that Mycroft does not wear bergamot and patchouli scented perfume, and unless Watson’s changed her usual scent (a distractingly spicy fragrance), he’s almost certain that her paramour was a woman.

It could be a friend, of course. It could have been a completely platonic dalliance, but his senses tell him otherwise and he treads more carefully. The orange tulips that had been in the vase when he’d left have been replaced by white gardenias. He’s never liked gardenias.

He’s about to ascend the little staircase when he hears shuffling - a pair of footsteps coming down the passage, towards the stairs. Bare soles, light against the solid wood – someone taller than Watson, slightly heavier.

He considers leaving, or at least concealing himself lest he alarm the visitor, but their steps are nimble and quick and moving would startle them more than staying in place. And so he waits until the stranger descends the little staircase.

One step, two, threefourfive.

And then there she is.

Sherlock finds himself staring into the startled face of the woman whom he once called Irene Adler, whom he once loved beyond all measure or reason.

She swallows and, perhaps unconsciously, pulls at the hem of the jumper (Watson’s jumper) just brushing her thighs. Her attempt at modesty is laughable. But he does not laugh.

He makes a choking sound and clenches his fists so hard, he hears his knuckles crack. He does this to stop himself from reaching out, not sure if his hands would embrace her or strangle her. He doesn’t want to find out.

They’re quiet for long enough for the cat to jump off from the piano and stretch itself out on the floor with a satisfied little whine. Its claws dig into the rug with a soft snick, snick, snick.  

“How long?” he asks eventually, unable to keep with quiver of betrayal from his voice, “-have you been here?”

 Her answer is a low and apologetic. “Three days now.”

She stands upon the bottom stair and leans back against the railing. She looks… softer. _Passive_. The word seems to be the antithesis of everything she is, and yet, in the pale, waning light tricking down from the top of the stairs, she’s a spectre – vague and insubstantial.

And at the same time, so alive that he finds his fingers twitching at the urge to touch her, to press her soft, tousled hair between his fingers, to press his thumbs against her throat. He does not trust himself any more than he trusts her and instead he says, “And the bombing? Pakistan?”

“Planned.” Her face is impassive, having recovered from her brief moment of surprise.

He clenches his jaw, hating himself for the words that come next. “To be with her.”

And then her brow furrows for just a second in that way that it had when she was disappointed by him. “To be free.”

“And are you?”

“In a way.” Her eyes flicker up to the landing and he follows the path of her gaze to where, no doubt, Watson is asleep.

“Will you stay?”

Something terrible happens when he asks this. The moment the question arises, he realises with some horror, that he wants her answer to be _yes._ It makes no sense, there is no logic behind it. It is a desire rooted in a complicated web of emotions he cannot begin to untangle.

She is not his anymore. He thinks that once, perhaps she truly was. But their tie, their bond has been shaped into something different. And still, he wants her to stay. He hates her as much as he loves her, is repulsed by her as much as he desires her. And still, he wants her to stay.

Her answer is a quiet, “No.” And he wonders if she senses his disappointment. When she smiles at him softly, he’s sure of it.

“And Watson?”

She looks at him for a long moment, her face unreadable. And then she looks down, and for the first time in as long as he has known her – as Irene, as Moriarty, as this strange creature named Jamie, he sees her look sad. Not disappointed, not melancholic, not frustrated, but _sad_. She looks young then, and small, like the woman she might have been if every path she’d ever taken had been a different one.

“She has you.” When she looks back at him, her face is set in that mask of impassivity. “That will be enough.”

He finds he doesn't know what to say. There is nothing _to_ say.

He told her once that it would not end well, and here they are at the end and the only real devastation exists in the space between the woman on the stairs and the woman asleep in bed. This is not his story. Sherlock understands this now.

“Yes.” He says with a nod, as if he is assuring her of something. “It will be enough.”

He says nothing more and moves to pick up his suitcase.  It feels heavier than before, or perhaps he’s just suddenly exhausted.

He’s at the door when she calls his name and then a whispered, “Good night.”

He leaves without replying. There are too many words stuck in his throat.

 


	18. XVIII

_When she wakes, it’s dark and much too early to be pulled from sleep. The rain has finally let up and the shimmering stillness of pre-dawn seems to have descended around her. Joan turns and reaches for her phone. She squints at the bright screen, her wallpaper a picture of her and Oren as kids, gap-toothed and wild. It might have been taken on a trip to San Diego zoo when she was eight._

_The day is Saturday. The date, June eighteenth. It’s barely 4:30._

_A flutter of panic builds up inside of her as the days and hours leading up to this dark, early morning tumble back in snapshot memories._

_Joan has been very good at avoiding the panic, at talking over it and around it and just shutting it out completely. But there’s a little ball of twisting emotions that hangs from a string tied to her ribs - it sways inside of her like a pendulum, heavy in her stomach, just a fraction out of sync with her heart. Or, at least that’s what it feels like._

_She lets the phone drop back on the bedside table with a clumsy thump and turns to stare up at the ceiling. The room is almost completely dark and her eyes take a while to adjust. Joan inhales and exhales slowly, acutely conscious of the way her chest rises and falls._

_Beside her, Jamie stirs._

______

It’s not-quite spring when they return from London, and the worst of the winter melts away in dripping icicles and puddles of dirty snow.People come out of hibernation as the festive season is slowly forgotten and the banal bustle of daily life oils the great mechanism of the city.

New York welcomes Joan back with a series of mundane cases and family dinners. Oren has finally moved his nuclear family to Queens, which has somehow given Joan’s mother the notion that fortnightly dinners might be a good bonding exercise. Joan suffers through two months of these before “work” becomes her preferred excuse.

Her Saturday nights are instead dedicated to sifting through Sherlock’s cold-cases with a single-minded intensity that leads to new insights and cracks a seven-year old case wide open.

It’s the highlight of her month.

There’s work and there’s family and there’s a gaping chasm somewhere in the middle of it all that Joan refuses to look down - she won’t even go near it for fear of falling in so soon after she’s just clawed her way out.

She and Sherlock don’t talk about the exile to London, or about what transpired there. Joan doesn’t tell Sherlock about her four days holed up in the little apartment, making love to Jamie Moriarty while the summer rain fell in sheets around them.

Instead, Joan waits. She waits for it all to go back to normal, to before postcards, and orchids, and the guilt that called itself love and turned her world upside down.

While she waits, everything moves forward. There are times when she feels like her feet are buried in the sand as the tide comes in and swirls around her ankles. Still, Joan remains.

______

In February, Joan meets Audrey Wood. Audrey is a social worker. She’s passionate and smart and they hit it off immediately. When she asks Joan out for coffee, the “yes” comes easily, and for the first time in a while, Joan feels unstuck.

“She’s nice,” Sherlock says after first meeting Audrey.

“Nice?” She narrows her eyes at him. “You hate that word.”

“Not at all.” They’re on their way to question a suspect. Audrey had stopped by the brownstone just as they were leaving. She was dropping off the coat Joan had left at her place the night before. It was not how Joan had intended for her to meet Sherlock. If she was honest with herself, she had hoped to postpone the meeting indefinitely.  

Now, in the car, Sherlock says, “You fit.” He enunciates the ‘t’ as he turns his head and follows the changing landscape.

Joan ventures a glance at him. “But?”

“But nothing. She’s nice and you fit.”

On impulse she asks, “Do you consider yourself happy?”

Sherlock’s eyes stay fixed on the window. “I have moments of self-satisfaction.” He clenches and unclenches his fists, as if agitated and Joan expects him to say something next that would completely contradict his former statement, but instead he murmurs, “I don’t believe that happiness is something to which we are entitled. It’s a ridiculous pursuit quite honestly. We are the sum of our choices, good or bad. That said…” He pauses. “I’m heartened that you’ve found someone with whom you might be at your best.”

Joan makes a vague noise of agreement. She wants to tell him that _he’s_ the one around whom she’s her best, that maybe she doesn’t believe in entitled feelings either. But he seems genuinely pleased at her relationship and she wonders why her heart has suddenly plunged to her stomach.

______

Eight weeks into their relationship, Joan and Audrey run into Joan’s cousin, Alyssa, out with Joan’s aunt. Their conversation is punctuated with awkward pauses and curious looks. Audrey smiles a lot and takes her cues from Joan, who stands three inches away from her and doesn’t smile much at all. Joan introduces Audrey as “a friend” and scans the store for the nearest exit.

The inevitable phone call comes before dinner that evening. Joan’s not sure if her mother is more concerned with the fact that Audrey is a woman or that she’s black. Mary Watson talks around the issue and Joan finally says, “I know Aunt Angela spoke to you.”

She hears her mother take a breath and say, “Joan, are you seeing that woman? Romantically?”

Joan has prepared for this. She’s practiced it, and so her tone is measured when she answers. “Yes. We’re in a relationship.”

“Is she the same woman? From before?”

“Before?” Joan’s heart begins a heavy thud.

“Last year sometime, I was sure you were seeing someone and you wouldn’t tell me about it. You were so cagey.”

“I wasn’t-”

“I’m your mother Joan, I know these things.”

“No.” It comes out more sharply that she means it to. “Not the same.”

“Are you…” Gay? Insane? Resigned to disownment? The words flicker loudly in her head like cheap motel signs.

Mary is quiet for so long that Joan wonders if she’s passed out.

But then, there’s a slow exhale on the other end of the line and Mary’s voice comes out in a strained whisper. “Does this woman make you happy?”

Joan remembers her conversation with Sherlock, of his comment in the car and she thinks, if Sherlock sees it, Sherlock who arguably knows her better than anyone else, who sees things others can’t, then surely it must be true.

Joan thinks of Audrey and how she gets up early on the mornings that Joan stays over to make coffee that she never drinks herself, or the way Audrey’s brow furrows at the takeout menu when she’s figuring out what to order for dinner, Audrey’s body first thing in the morning - warm and sweet.

“Yes,” she says, as definitively as she can. “She does.”

______

_“You're fretting.” Jamie’s voice is gravelly with sleep. Her eyes are barely open and she’s splayed across the bed, with an arm off the mattress and one over Joan’s torso. She’s a reckless sleeper - thoughtless limbs flung in all directions._

_“I'm fine.” Joan tenses when Jamie slides her hand up her stomach, across her ribcage and over her breast. Her palm is cool and dry._

_“Your heart is racing.”_

_“I had a nightmare.” Somehow, it’s easier than saying, “I can’t sleep because everything we said between now and the moment you showed up here rattles inside of me like bones.”_

_“What’s the time?” In Jamie’s sleep-muddled voice, it comes out as “Wassatime?”_

_“4:30.”_

_Jamie makes a dissatisfied little grumble and scoots closer. “Stop fretting.”_

_In the dark, Joan huffs. “I’m not… fretting.”_

_“You are.” And in a matter-of-fact tone, “You regret this.”_

_“I don’t.” Joan sighs and Jamie curls in closer. “Go back to sleep.”_

_Joan closes her eyes and time ticks by, along with that swaying pendulum._

_In a dream, she asks, “What happens next?” and Jamie answers,_

_“Whatever we want.”_

______

Joan doesn’t go into the attic anymore.

Not since she and Sherlock had their showdown and she had promised to end things with Moriarty.

She’s become very good at employing selective memory. Her therapist (whom she no longer sees) would tell her that this compartmentalisation is a form of self-preservation. Joan would agree.

On the sunny May morning, when Joan does go up, it’s because there’s a delivery of five pounds of silkworm larvae that Sherlock needs to sign for and he isn’t responding to her calling his name from the bottom of the stairs. She signs for them herself, but climbs those steps with the distinct purpose of yelling at him to sign for his own worms next time.

The attic is much the same as she remembers. The board is positioned in the same place as before. It’s a canvas of scribbled post-its, grisly photographs, and thread pulled across the board, this way and that. In the corner, a subway map, not of New York, but of Vienna - its coloured lines and stations dot the page like constellations.  

Joan tilts her head, curiosity getting the best of her as she takes a step forward.

It doesn’t seem to be focused around a particular crime, or person, but rather a series of incidents that Sherlock is trying to link or make sense of. Joan’s been with him long enough to understand his process, to see the logic in his chaos.

What she deciphers from this particular maze of information is a pattern of crimes and murders, committed through a host of European countries. Sherlock has written the dates beneath each incident and they span back a year or so. Joan doesn’t have her glasses with her, and she’s forced to move closer to read some of Sherlock’s scrawl. Drug smuggling, sex-trafficking and murder, murder, murder. The inspiration for this board seems to be the worst kind of-

“I see you’ve found my little project… ”

Joan starts in surprise and swallows an embarrassing noise that might have manifested as a squeal. She turns to find Sherlock behind her, putting down the box of worms she’d left in the hallway.

“What is this?” She takes a step back as he comes in to stand beside her and they regard the board like two connoisseurs appreciating a modern art piece.

“Something new,” Sherlock absently scratches his chin. “And possibly old. An incredibly sleek and well-organised terrorist group that appears to have sprung up within the last eighteen months.”

“They’re responsible for all of this?”

“And a host of other atrocities I have yet to confirm.”

“God.” Joan fights back an involuntary shiver.

“Of course, they aren’t particularly novel in any regard, but they’re fascinating. And seem to have a knack for drawing attention.”

“Interpol?”

Sherlock’s face twists into a strange expression. “Among others.”

There’s a photograph on the bottom right corner of an overweight man in an expensive suit. Joan points at it. “That’s Jonathan Olivier. I remember that story. Assassinated outside of some museum in Switzerland.”

“The Netherlands.”

“Yeah. He was involved in art smuggling.”

“And a number of far more insidious crimes.”

“So you think this terrorist group was behind it?”

“On the contrary, I believe Olivier was a member.”

Joan waggles her finger at the left side of the board, to the row of photographs depicting dead men in blood-stained suits.

“So they’re also being targeted? These are all members of-”

““They call themselves Le Gardien,” Sherlock offers.

“Wait.” A memory tickles at Joan’s brain with long, ghostly fingers. “I’ve heard that name before.”

Sherlock blinks at her. “Impossible. I’ve only just discovered it.”

“No, I’m sure I’ve-” The memory comes back in an almost violent rush. Jamie on a leather couch, her feet in woollen socks curled up under her, the smell of patchouli, whiskey that shone amber in a glass, and the words, _Le Gardien they call themselves. And they are... impressive._

“In London. She told me…” She can’t look at Sherlock. “She mentioned them.” There’s that carefully stitched up tear that goes straight through her middle. To look at Sherlock in this moment would be to rip it open again and bleed all over the ancient wooden floorboards. It’s a mess neither of them want to clean up.  

Beside her, Sherlock speaks. His voice is light, casual, as if she has not spent these months lying to him. “Well, that would explain the spider.”

Joan’s eyes flicker to the crudely drawn spider, more of a symbol than an actual illustration. Beneath it is a thick red question mark. She wonders why it didn’t draw her attention before.

“What does it mean?” She has a phantom inkling of what it means, but she doesn’t want to guess, or hope.

“Il Ragno. The Spider. Also a Dickensian character and the preferred moniker of Le Gardien’s assassin.”

Silence settles and extends between them, thick as fog and just as opaque.

“Are you...” Joan clears her throat and tries again. “Can you be certain she’s behind it?”

Sherlock crosses his arms over his chest and bounces back on his heels. His focus is on the board, not on Joan. “No. But it seems to fit, doesn’t it? They rise in the wake of her fall. She reemerges as The Spider and they become the target of her vengeance. It has a sort of tragedian flair upon which I imagine she’d thrive.”

When she does look at him, standing beside her in a thin, ratty purple t-shirt, his chin rough with a day’s worth of stubble, his tanned arms crossed and covered in tattoos, Joan is suddenly overcome with a sense of tenderness.

“You knew. All along. You knew she was alive. That’s why you’ve been following this. That’s why you’re not surprised about London.”

Sherlock clenches his jaw. His silence is stubborn.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Joan persists.

“Why didn’t you?” The hurt in his voice is unexpected and jarring and that tear rips despite her best intentions.

“I wanted it to be over,” Joan admits. “I wanted to put it behind me.”

Sherlock looks at her, finally. “As did I.”

The truth has exhausted her and Joan sighs and motions to the board. “So why all this?”

“Because,” Sherlock mimics her sigh. “Because despite everything, she continues to be a puzzle.” His expression turns sardonic. “Perhaps even more so now, after you.”

The candidness with which he says it makes Joan’s stomach turn. It’s a combination of nervousness and excitement - a strange response to hearing another person acknowledge and confirm what had occurred between herself and Moriarty.

“Why didn’t you show this to me before?”

“I wanted to be certain.”

“Certain of what?”

“That your affect on her would hold.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

Sherlock looks at her with something just short of condescension. A look that screams, ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

“She can’t-” Joan exhales in frustration. This is not a conversation she thought she’d need to have, especially not with Sherlock. She’s put it behind her. It’s over and concluded. And yet here she is, with the tide circling her ankles. She feels herself sinking all over again and she grasps on to the one truth that has kept her afloat all of these months. “Moriarty can’t change. You know this as well as I do.”

Sherlock nods. “Yes. And yet, Moriarty for all intents and purposes, is dead.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You underestimate your influence on the wayward.”

Joan barks out a humourless laugh. “The wayward? Is that what we call murderers?”

“And drug-addled misanthropes.”

“You’re different now,” Joan says offhandedly and Sherlock launches a pointed expression at her.

“Change then, is possible?”

Joan pinches at the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Even if it was… for her. I don’t want to be the cause of that. I don’t want to be some avatar for her morality.”

Sherlock’s expression, which was mildly triumphant, morphs into something like pity. “I don’t think you’ve a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

He waves at the board almost impatiently, as if it’s all there; if only Joan would look.

“In her efforts to dismantle Le Gardien, she has been systematically annihilating every public figure involved in its running. On occasion, she absorbs whatever venture the organisation has plotted and I would assume all of its surplus. However, there are a number of instances, particularly those involving trafficking and arms smuggling, where she has sabotaged plans without capitalising on their profits. Her methods have changed. She’s as ruthless and efficient as always - the gunning down of Olivier is proof of that - but the art of it, the finesse appears more focused on expedient takedown than on carnage, which before was very much her modus operandi. Remember how she used Moran? Revelled in his chaos? That gleeful destructiveness seems to have withered somewhat.”

Joan’s eyes fall to a photograph of a body on an examiner’s tray. In the centre of his forehead is a perfectly rounded bullet hole. “What does she have to gain from simple sabotage? Her pride?”

“Perhaps. Though I’m not sure that she’s much interested in regaining her former position.”

“She’s not trying to usurp Le Gardien?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “She’s trying to destroy them. In an ironic and rather utilitarian fashion, she seems to be helping Interpol. Will she remain largely benign? I’ve no idea, but for now… well, it seems The Spider is on our side.”

The implications of what this means, of what it _could_ mean, writhes around inside of her like Sherlock’s silkworms.

She feels his eyes on her. Intent and sympathetic all at once.

“What I said before. About…” He trails off before saying, with some conviction, “I don’t believe that anyone is entitled to happiness or misery. Our states are mere consequence of our choices, how we choose to interpret the randomness of a chaotic universe. However - if anyone deserves to be happy, it would be you, Watson. And perhaps, in the end, it is not enough.”

She meets his stare, “What isn’t enough?”

“Thank you for the bombyx mori.” He walks past her to the door and holds it open, wordlessly prompting her exit.

“Sherlock-”

“I’ve written their feeding instructions on the fridge. Mulberry leaves all week. I shall keep you appraised of any significant developments, should you choose to follow this as I have.”

Joan hesitates and looks from the board, to his suddenly impatient figure. Everything there is to say has been said a thousand times over. Everything is as clear as it is murky, painful as it is easy. She walks past Sherlock and out of the attic and knows for certain, that she won’t be back.

______

_When Joan next wakes, it’s close to 6am and the grey, filtered sunlight is curling over the edge of the windowsill. Jamie lies on her stomach, faced away from Joan, flung out on the other side of the mattress. The sheet between their bodies is cool._

_Joan gets up with sleep-heavy limbs and almost trips over the cat who has taken to creeping into her room in the early hours and sleeping on the edge of the dresser. He’s a surly old thing, but he’s growing on her. She thinks maybe Sherlock was right about him._

_The bruises on her upper arms, on her ribs, on the backs of her thighs begin to tingle until she’s uncomfortably aware of each one._

_Joan looks around for her clothes before she remembers that they’d strewn them along half of the staircase and probably some of the landing. She isn’t usually that reckless, but Sherlock is away and no-one else has a key. They’re safe in this little bubble of their own imagining. For now, at least._

_She splashes her face with water and looks up at herself in the mirror, at the droplets dripping down her chin, her wet eyelashes, the dark strands of hair that hang limply against her cheeks, and the violet bloom on the side of her jaw, where Jamie had sucked blood to the surface like a frantic teenager._

_She is spent and exhilarated. She wonders if this is who Jamie sees or if she is only aware of the way Joan’s entire body responds to her touch - a corpse come to life, as if Jamie’s fingers were endowed with electric current. Jamie, the mad orchestrator and Joan, her creation._

_Joan remembers Jamie once trailing her fingers down a painting and muttering about chiaroscuro - the way the darkness shapes the light. That’s what it sometimes feels like._

_“I was beginning to think you’d been spirited away.” Jamie turns as Joan climbs back into bed. Jamie’s angel hair is stark against the dark sheets, her face pale and clean of make-up. Just a woman, Joan thinks for a moment. Naked and vulnerable, and in this moment, hers._

_“Nowhere to run to.” Joan says it lightly, but the previous night’s conversation has permeated the sheets, the walls, and hangs above them like stale cigarette smoke._

_“You slept fitfully,” Jamie states, leaning on her elbow and looking up at Joan. The duvet has slipped away, and Joan’s eyes trace the long, uninterrupted line from her neck, down the curve of her shoulder and past the subtle ridges of her ribcage. She inspires in Joan an indefinable sort of desire that vacillates between feverish and maudlin._

_“Did I?” She means to sound indifferent._

_Jamie watches Joan with that cool, unflinching gaze._

_“You can take it back,” Jamie finally says._

_“What?”_

_“All of it. Everything we said last night. Chalk it up to madness.”_

_“And what then?” Joan slides down and stares up at the ceiling. She tilts her head and the ceiling becomes Jamie’s face, staring down at her. “It all just goes away?”_

_“Perhaps this time it might.”_

_Joan barely moves as Jamie bends down on her elbow. Her kiss contradicts everything she’s just said. It’s focused, possessive. Joan gives herself up to it. She’s done fighting the inevitable._

______

When Audrey says, “What’s wrong?” Joan’s immediate reaction is,

“Nothing.” Which of course, is a lie.

They’re at Audrey’s apartment. A small place in Tribeca. Joan likes it. She likes the way it smells like frankincense and sandalwood from the incense Audrey’s always got burning.

“You’re a million miles away.”

Joan offers up an apologetic smile. “A case, I’m sorry.”

“The same one as last week?” Audrey sits up, across from Joan on her comfortable old sofa and she pulls her bare feet up under her.

“No, something… new.” Joan doesn’t even consider discussing what had occurred in the attic. It’s folded up and packed away, only to be unfolded and unpacked in those minutes before sleep or upon waking, in the dream state of between when hope and insanity feel like the same thing. “I can’t really talk about it.”

“Well, I’m here. If you want to.”

Joan smiles tightly. “I know.”

Minutes pass. They talk of mundane things: the price of produce at the farmer’s market, plans to visit an exhibition that weekend, a story on page three of the Times and then Audrey says,

“I can’t do this anymore.” She says it quietly. Like it’s a secret, something she wasn’t supposed to tell.

Joan’s heart begins a heavy thud, sprung from dread, relief, guilt. “Where is this coming from?”

Audrey chews on her bottom lip, looks at Joan, looks away. “I’m not a competitive person, Joan. But when I’m with you I feel… I feel like I’m constantly competing with whatever else is happening in your life.”

Dread, relief, guilt. “You’ve always known who I was, what I do.”

“It’s not just your job. It’s Sherlock and your family and whatever that dark cloud is in your past that you won’t tell me about. I want you to let me in, to trust me and I keep thinking that if I hold out just a little bit longer.” She stops, shakes her head with a sad expression. “I can’t wait anymore.”

Joan doesn’t know what to say, or how hard to fight for something she’s not sure she even wants. Except, she does want it, she wants safe and warm and good, and Audrey is all of those things. She isn’t unpredictable or cruel, she isn’t challenging or complicated.

Relief, guilt.

Joan understands it then, what Sherlock was saying before. It all comes down to choice. Audrey is choosing a life beyond what Joan can offer. Joan can’t begrudge her that.

Joan thinks that, if given the option, she might have made a different choice all of those months ago in London. It’s too late now, but there’s comfort in the clarity.

______

_Joan closes her eyes, opens them again. Jamie’s teeth scape against her jaw. Her kisses have turned soft and lazy. Her lips meander across Joan’s skin with no destination in mind. Sunlight creeps over the blankets, and weaves its way into Jamie’s hair, onto her skin. There’s a mole on her shoulder that Joan wants to press her lips to. She doesn’t._

______

It takes Joan eleven days to tell Sherlock that she and Audrey have broken up. When she does, it’s because he mentions that he’s leaving for a conference on ‘Projectiles and Ballistics’ in Buffalo and that she may feel free to defile the brownstone to her heart’s content. He does not invite her to come along.

While she might have enjoyed the distraction of travel, she thinks a day or two alone might be curative.

Sherlock’s been gone for two hours and Joan has a headache from reading case files. She considers going out, but it’s been raining on and off for the past two days and everything feels muggy and damp. Joan finds herself thinking of London, particularly when Napoleon - who they’d brought back, despite Joan’s half-hearted protests - winds himself around her ankles and purrs loudly, alerting her that his food bowl is empty and he’d very much like her to remedy the situation. He seems to like her more than Sherlock. The irony amuses her.

She feeds the cat and lingers for a moment, watching him snuffle and gulp down the wet, meaty chunks she’s set down. There’s an odd sort of satisfaction in watching him fill himself up.

Joan doesn’t go back to the study, but instead finds herself on the roof in the dwindling hues of twilight. The bees are quiet in their boxes and Joan turns away from them to face the city. The rain has dissipated to a light drizzle that falls over her cheeks and hair like little round stars.

She watches windows light up as the sky darkens. The drizzle threatens to become rain and Joan knows she should leave before it begins to pour in earnest, but something keeps her rooted.  

“I’ve always liked this time of day.”

Joan turns to see Jamie standing just a few feet away, her face is cast in shadow under a large black umbrella.

The door to the roof always creaks. Joan should have heard her come up, but she didn’t. She thinks perhaps Jamie flew up on a broom, trailing a comet of bad weather behind her.

“This in-between hour, after twilight but not quite dark enough to be night. The light is fascinating, the way it shifts so subtly, merging into colours we don’t yet have names for.”

Joan should be surprised, but she isn’t. She thinks that part of her had been expecting this meeting for a while now, maybe even before ending it with Audrey, before the revelation in the attic. She doesn’t think she ever truly believed that the last she saw of Jamie Moriarty was the last she’d ever see.

A raindrop splatters against the nape of her neck and trails a cold path down. Joan shivers. Her eyes don’t leave Jamie’s face. She doesn’t say, “What are you doing here?” She doesn’t say, “I’ve missed you,” or “I wish you’d stayed away” or any of the thousand words that lie in anticipation on her tongue.

Jamie seems to be waiting for Joan to speak, to react and when Joan doesn’t, she takes a step towards her. Joan resists the urge to step back.

“I had hoped for a warmer reception.” Jamie’s mouth pulls into a quick, flighty smile that lifts her cheeks and makes her look younger, approachable.

Joan blinks as a raindrop falls against her eyelashes and Jamie becomes a blurry vision. “Are you the reason Sherlock isn’t here?”

“I may have anonymously directed his attention towards the conference. The decision to attend was all his own.”

Joan makes a sound of disgust. The night sky is almost dark now and the air is perforated with the sounds of traffic and the fall of rain.

When Jamie comes even closer, close enough to shield Joan under the arc of her umbrella, Joan murmurs, “Don’t,” and something inside of her clenches up.

“But you’re getting all soggy,” Jamie’s breath is warm against a cheek. Her scent is familiar and exciting all at once, and Joan wants to push her back.

“You shouldn’t be here.” She ducks out and makes for the door, which creaks when she exits and again as Jamie follows.

“Is there ever a moment that you’re not plotting and conniving?” she calls over her shoulder.

Joan’s voice is edged with anger she didn’t realise had been building up inside.

“I’m merely responding to the predictability of the world.” Jamie follows Joan into the study, dripping water from her closed umbrella all over the hardwood floors.  She sits on the broad arm of the ratty red sofa and crosses one leg over the other, looking quite relaxed. “It isn’t my fault that I know what everyone is about to do before they do it.”

“Everyone?”

“Not everyone.” She waits until Joan is looking at her. “Not you.”

Jamie continues and her amusement is tipped with spite. “I admit, I did not expect you to fall for the doe-eyed martyr. In retrospect, she was an obvious choice.” She doesn’t allow Joan her moment of indignation before asking, “Did you feel like sleeping with her erased all traces of me? Of what we did together?”

The anger that washes through Joan runs from hot to cold, and her voice is steady when she asks, “What are you doing?”

For a ghost of a moment, Jamie looks uncertain, but then it’s gone and Joan wonders if she’s projecting. “I wanted to check in.”

“You can’t just show up here. In my home. It’s not charming or romantic; it’s invasive. You can’t disrupt my life every time you’re bored or lonely.”

Jamie uncrosses her legs and leans forward. “You’d rather I’d called first?”

“Yes.”

“Would you have agreed to meet with me, if I had?”

“I don’t know,” Joan answers honestly. “But it would have been my decision to make.”

Jamie studies Joan’s face for a moment, narrows her eyes as she comes to a conclusion of sorts and then says, “I misjudged the situation.”

“Yeah. You did.”

The weight of Jamie’s gaze, clear and blue, causes Joan to falter. Her anger turns to exasperation, to exhaustion. She sits across from the sofa, on the little leather chair and the span of the sitting room, strewn with newspaper lies between them.

She knows Jamie catches this, the lowering of her defences. She strikes immediately, her candour is an arrow - sharp and painful. “I wanted to see you.”

“We said it was over.” Joan wants her to stop. Stop talking, stop existing. “We agreed in London.”

“We did. Since then, I’ve had time to… reflect.”

“On how to murder all of those men?”

Jamie’s lips draw into a thin line. “Amongst other things.”

“Amongst other things,” Joan repeats wryly.

On the far wall behind Jamie, the old clock ticks down to the hour.

“I’ve missed you.”

Joan swallows down the words that push up from her chest, that bulge against the insides of her cheeks and form dangerous sentiments. Instead, she asks, “What happened to ‘love your solitude and sing out with the pain it causes you’?”

Deflection is easier than honesty.

Jamie’s lips turn up for a moment. “I’m afraid I’m too much of a hedonist to keep up with Rilke.”

Joan shakes her head. “So mercurial.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. The truth is, I’ve given you this time and in it, you’ve made yourself a life, or at the very least, resumed the life you had. Tell me, Joan, is it everything you imagined it to be? Are you happier now, without me?”

It’s almost scary, how easily they fall into this dynamic, how comfortably it fits.

“You don’t believe in happiness.” Joan crosses her arms over her chest and leans back. “Isn’t that what you told me?” She thinks back to that conversation, all of those months ago, when Jamie was a concept, an abstraction. “You only value power.”

“Yet here I stand, at the highest point of the world, staring up at the sky, and all I want is you.”

Joan is still. She is disarmed.

What moves her now is the resignation with which Jamie says it, as if she’s given up, or perhaps given in and it mirrors something in Joan.

“Without you, Watson, I’m… less. Not just bored or lonely, but less, made insubstantial by your absence.” She manages a self-effacing chuckle. “Dramatic, I know. But I understand it now, why Sherlock needs you. What you are to him. How lost he must be when there’s discord between you.”

“This isn’t about Sherlock.”

“No,” Jamie agrees. “No, it isn’t.”

Joan is quiet for a moment and then, “Why now? After everything?”

Jamie looks down. “Business has been going well. I’ve been very good, as you well know.”

“If by good you mean systematically slaughtering an entire organisation to absorb their profits.”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

Joan doesn’t blink. “What’s your end game?”

“The swift extermination of Le Gardien. I had hoped, at this stage that they would have crumbled, but there are certain individuals, insipid remora fish, made fat and wealthy by my arrest. They are currently being dealt with. I imagine I’m giving Interpol quite a boon.”

“You want a sticker and a kiss on the cheek because you’ve been killing bad guys?”

“Well, I had thought I’d get a modicum of credit.” Her smile is lazy and Joan is reminded of Napoleon, purring with self-satisfaction after depositing a bloody sparrow at the foot of her bed.

“And what happens when you get bored of playing the vigilante? When you find another Moran or Gaspar to set loose? What then?”

“Do you still not understand? After everything I’ve just…” Jamie emits a little sound of frustration. “Perhaps you’re not as intelligent as I had initially assumed.”

“Yes, and insulting me is a really efficient way of working through this.”

“You’re being difficult.”

“I’m being realistic.”

“What else would you have me do? I’ve reorganised the way I operate, my methods-”

“I never asked you to.”

“It was not for you. Not solely for you.” Jamie runs her hand through her hair and Joan is suddenly reminded of Sherlock. The gesture is familiar and jarring. “I told you before, Moriarty was eviscerated in more than just name. This change is organic, necessary.”

Joan shrugs helplessly. “None of this changes who I am, who you are. There’s no happy ending here, Jamie.”

“Darling,” Jamie looks at Joan with an incredulous expression. “Who said anything about an ending?”

Joan gets up and sits on the sofa, beside Jamie who looks down at her from the arm of the chair. Jamie twirls loose strands of Joan’s hair around her index finger. The gesture is casual and intimate.

“So, what? We go on until one of us gives it up or you do something that I can’t forgive?”

“Isn’t that the way of all things? The logical thing, the smart thing to do would be to end it and let it be. But we’ve tried that, haven’t we? And would we be so different from any other pair? Stupid and hopeful in the attempt.”

“Stupid and hopeful are the last words I’d use to describe you.”

“Were you not the one who just called me mercurial?”

Joan sighs and leans into Jamie’s body at her side. “This won’t work.”

“Most likely not.”

“And you want to do it anyway?”

“I’m here, am I not?” A change in Jamie’s face as she says, “Besides, it’s my birthday.”

“It’s your birthday?”

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “Don’t I deserve a present instead of a lump of coal in my stocking?”

“I don’t think you know how birthdays work.” Joan tries to remember the date. _June 17th_. She thinks she knew this, that she’d read it in some file somewhere, or maybe Jamie had told her all those months ago in London, almost a year ago now.

The clock ticks. Everything moves forward.

Joan asks, “What do we do now?”

______

_As New York wakes up with sirens and horns, Joan thinks again of London, of mornings waking up next to Jamie. It was a fantasy of sorts, somehow separate from her reality. But here, in New York, in her bed, everything is real and present and she can’t escape it. The sensation of Jamie’s skin, sticky against hers, the warmth of her breath against Joan’s collar bone, the tickle of her hair against Joan’s shoulder._

_“I don’t want to take it back,” Joan murmurs, her fingers buried in Jamie’s hair. “I told you once before, I’m not afraid.”_

_“You lied then.” Jamie shifts, raises her head to look at Joan._

_“I’m not lying now.”_

_There’s a subtle difference between acceptance and defeat, Joan realises suddenly. Neither of them has won this game. And perhaps Jamie was right when she said that it’s far from over, or perhaps it’s just that there is no way to win or lose, there is only the acceptance of what is, of the unfathomable and illogical thing that exists between them._

_Jamie’s smile is fragile and unexpected. “Stupid and hopeful indeed.”_

_The city yawns. Sunlight filters in. That swaying pendulum stops._

_Joan sighs as Jamie leans into her and for a suspended moment, there is nothing else._

______

 

_I shut my eyes, and all the world drops dead._

                                              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has followed this story over the past year and a half, every comment, every click of kudos, every re-read chapter, I am profoundly and overwhelmingly grateful. Thank you for your patience, encouragement and wonderful words. I hope you have enjoyed reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it.


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